MAGDALEN COLLEGE 215 



of a circle ; the content of ground on which it would drop, 

 would be no less than 768 square yards, whereof allowing as 

 before, three square yards of ground for a horse to stand on 

 (three yards long, and one yard broad, seeming a complete 

 proportion), there might 256 horses stand under that Tree] or 

 allowing as before 2 square feet for a man, 3456 men" (Plot's 

 " Oxfordshire "). 



It lived for eighty-nine years in the next century, but 

 " On Monday last, without any violence from the wind, 

 the old oak . . . fell fortunately into the meadow. . . . The 

 root was entirely gone to powder, so that it dropped by the 

 weight of an arm, . . . The people divert themselves in 

 crowding in numbers in the inside of the trunk " (Letter from 

 Dan. Prince in Nichols' " Literary Anecdotes," iii. 699. See 

 (Walker's) " Oxoniana," ii. 155-7 ; Macray's " Register"). 



The dimensions were: height, 71 ft. 8 in. ; girth, 21 ft. 9 in. ; 

 solid content 754 ft. The shell had for a long time been 

 kept from falling by two or three roots "scarcely so large 

 as a two-inch cable." 



A section of the wood used to be among the specimens 

 in the Botanical Museum, and a carved state chair inscribed 

 " Quercus Magdalenensis corruit Festo S. Petri, 1789," is 

 in the President's Lodgings, and a snuff-box cut from its 

 wood has lately been presented to the Common Room. 

 Malchair published views of the tree, both standing and as 

 it lay after its fall (Cox's " Recollections of Oxford "). 



A young Oak to take its place was planted on April 8, 1807, 

 by Robert Penson, Gardener, "on the left as you enter the 

 walk " (Walker's " Flora of Oxford "). 



As the oasis is to the wanderers in the desert, so is precise 

 information to the chronicler of trees. The planting of the 

 Elms in the Grand Walk (i.e. those between St. Swithun's 

 Building and the street) is circumstantially described by 

 Wood ("Life and Times," vol. ii., p. 479)' 



" 1680. At the beginning of the month of February the elmes 



