THE OAK. 9 



square, and yielded four sciuare beams, each forty- 

 four feet in leng;th. An oak felled at Withy Park, 

 Shropshire, in 1697, was nine feet in diameter, with- 

 out the bark ; there were twenty-eight tons of tim- 

 ber in the body alone ; and the spread of the top, 

 from bough to bough, was one Inuidred and forty- 

 four feet. In Holt Forest, Hampshire, there was 

 an oak, which, at seven feet from the ground, was 

 thirty-four feet in circumference in 1759, and twenty 

 years after, the circumference had not increased half 

 an inch. Dr. Plott mentions an oak at Norbury, 

 which was of the enormous circumference of forty- 

 five feet ; and when it was felled, and lying flat upon 

 the ground, two horsemen, one on each side the 

 trunk, were concealed from each other. The same 

 author mentions an oak at Keicot, under the shade of 

 which four thousand three hundred and seventy-four 

 men had sufficient room to stand. The Boddington 

 oak, in the Vale of Gloucester, was fifty-four feet in 

 circumference at the base. The larger arms and 

 branches were gone in 1783; and the hollow cavity 

 was sixteen feet in its largest diameter, with the top 

 formed into a regular dome ; while the young twigs 

 on the decayed top had small leaves about the size 

 of those of the hawthorn, and an abundant crop of 

 acorns. The hollow had a door and one window; 

 and little labour might have converted the tree into 

 a commodious, and rather a spacious room. The 

 Fairlop oak in Essex, though inferior in dimensions 

 to the last mentioned, was a tree of immense size, — 

 being between six and seven feet in diameter, at three 

 feet from the ground. Damory's oak in Dorsetshire 

 was the largest oak of which mention is made. Its 

 circumference was sixty-eight feet ; and the cavity of 

 it, which was sixteen feet long and twenty feet high, 

 was, about the time of the Commonwealth, used by 

 an old man for the entertainment of travellers, as an 

 ale-house. The dreadful storm in the third year of 



