NATURE'S WOODCRAFT: A CHAPTER ON STEMS 241 



tree "was deprived of its heart by the eccentric desire of the then owner 

 to make a tunnel through the trunk. This novel piece of engineering was 

 effected without any apparent injury to the tree. An opening was made 

 through which a Duke of Portland drove a carriage and six horses, and 

 three horsemen could ride abreast. The arch is 10 ft. 3 in. high, and 6 ft. 

 3 in. wide." The G-reendale Oak has no longer the Cowthorpe Oak at 

 Wetherby, in Yorkshire, as a competitor. This tree was reported to be in 

 possession of " a few green leaves " so late as the year 1880, and was then 

 thought to be about eighteen centuries old, but it is now a ruin. In 1776 

 its circumference 

 three feet from the 

 ground was forty- 

 eight feet, though 

 Jesse, sixty years 

 ago, gave its 

 measurement at the 

 base as seventy- 

 eight feet. The 

 Winfarthing Oak, 

 mentioned above, 

 measured seventy 

 feet in circumference 

 at the base of its 

 trunk in 1820, and, 

 in the opinion of 

 some judges, is quite 

 as ancient as its 

 Welbeck rival. It 

 is said that it was 

 an old tree at the 

 time of the Norman 

 Conquest. 



Other large Oaks 

 mentioned by Jesse 

 include the Salcey 

 Forest Oak, Northamptonshire, as being forty-six feet in circumference, 

 presumably at the base of the trunk ; the Flitton Oak in Devonshire, thirty- 

 three feet at one foot above the ground ; the Hempstead Oak in Essex, 

 fifty-three feet ; and the Merton Oak in Norfolk, sixty-three feet. He also 

 mentions the remains, at Ellerslie in Renfrewshire, of the Wallace Oak, 

 in which it is said William Wallace and three hundred of his followers 

 hid themselves from the English. 



Nor are Oaks and Chestnuts the only trees famous for longevity. An 

 Ivy (Hedera helix) near Montpellier is nearly four hundred and sixty 

 19 



FIG. 297. TUMBOA (Welwitschia mirabilis). 



A remarkable plant of tropical Africa, consisting of a hard disc from which is given 



off on opposite sides a pair of leaves torn into leathery thongs which are six feet in 



length. A flower-cone is shown below. 



