8 VEGETABLE SUBSTA^XES. 



and planking as the others are for crooked timbers ; 

 and, therefore, in order to secure a proper supply, 

 not only for maritime, but for domestic purposes, it 

 is desirable to have them in both situations. 



The trunk of the detached oak acquires by far the 

 greater diameter ; some of the old hollow trees, most 

 of which are of this description, having a diameter of 

 as much as sixteen feet in the cavity, and still a shell 

 of timber on the outside, sufficiently vigorous for 

 })roducing leaves and even acorns. The age to 

 which the oak can continue to vegetate, even after 

 the core has decayed, has not been fully ascertained. 

 But, in favourable situations, it must be very consi- 

 derable. In the New Forest, Evelyn counted, in the 

 sections of some trees, three hundred or four hundred 

 concentric rings or layers of wood, each of which 

 must have recorded a year's growth. The same cele- 

 brated planter mentions oaks in Dennington Park, 

 near Newbury, once the residence of Chaucer, 

 which could not have aiTived at the - size which 

 they possessed in a less period than about three hun- 

 dred years; and though he does not say upon what 

 evidence the opinion is grounded, Gilpin notices, in 

 his Forest Scenery, " a few venerable oaks in the 

 New Forest, that chronicle upon their furrowed trunks 

 ages before the Conquest." 



Some out of the number of ancient oaks that are 

 celebrated, it may not be uninteresting to mention : 

 — One of the three in Dennington Park, the Kinc's 

 Oak, was fifty feet high before a bough or even a knot 

 appeared, and the base of it squared five feet entirely 

 solid; the Queen's Oak was straight as a line for forty 

 feet, then divided into two immense arms, and the 

 base of it squared to four feet; and Chaucer's Oak, 

 said to have been planted by the poet, though inferior 

 to the royal ones, was still a most stately tree. The 

 Framlingham oak (Suffolk), used in the construction 

 of the Royal Sovereign, was four feet nine inches 



