224 SYLVAN WINTER. 



with a rocky stratum, a hard and gravelly bed, or 

 any other difficulty, through which it is obliged, 

 in a zigzag course, to pick its way, and struggle 

 for a passage, the sympathetic stem, feeling every 

 motion, pursues the same indirect course above, 

 which the root does below : and thus the sturdy 

 plant, through the means of these subterraneous 

 encounters and hardy conflicts, assumes form 

 and character, and becomes, in a due course of 

 centuries, a picturesque tree.'* 



Even a thousand years after cutting from the 

 tree affords no criterion of the marvellous dura- 

 bility of Oak. After nearly double that period 

 the wood retains its marvellous freshness, and 

 seems indeed to be almost imperishable. When 

 workmen were engaged in clearing the channel at 

 Brundusium in Italy, they came upon Oak piles 

 which were driven into the bed of the channel 

 by Julius Caesar, to block up Pompey's fleet ; they 

 were the whole trunks of young Oaks, from 

 which the bark had been stripped, and though 

 they had been immersed under seven feet of sand 

 for more than eighteen hundred years, it is stated 

 * ' Forest Scenery,' pages 43-4. 



