58 AGE OF TREES. 



E. Harley, produced a butt of forty feet, and squared 

 five feet throughout its whole length, thus producing 

 twenty tons of timber a mass of surprising gran- 

 deur ! But the most magnificent oak ever known 

 to have grown in England was probably that dug 

 out of Hatfield Bog : it was a hundred and twenty 

 feet in length, twelve in diameter at the base, ten 

 in the middle, and six at the smaller end where 

 broken off; so that the butt for sixty feet squared 

 seven feet of timber, and four its entire length. 

 Twenty pounds were offered for this tree*. This 

 extraordinary vegetable should have been preserved 

 in some museum, as unequalled in ancient, unap- 

 proachable in modern days ; exceeding in magni- 

 tude even that famous larch brought to Rome in 

 the reign of Tiberiusf, and reserved as a curiosity 

 for many years, which was one hundred and twenty 

 feet long, and two feet in diameter its whole 

 length . 



Indigenous, flourishing, and inured to all the 

 caprices of our climate as the oak is, yet it produces 

 its fruit very precariously, and at times sparingly, 

 like a plant of exotic origin ; which does not appear 

 to have been the case formerly, when such herds 

 of swine were maintained by the produce of our 

 woods alone, and grants from manorial lords for 

 permission thus to feed them were recorded with 

 care as valuable obtainments. 



* Philosoph. Trans., as quoted in the Sylva. 

 f Pliny's Natural History. 



