44 AGE OF TREES. 



their leaders when young, and hence are short in the 

 but : yet we have records of aspiring timber trees of 

 this species of astonishing magnitude, though perhaps 

 none of them exceed those mentioned by Evelyn, cut 

 down near Newberry in Berkshire, one of which ran 

 fifty feet clear without a knot, and cut clean timber five 

 feet square at the base ; its consort gave forty feet of 

 clear, straight timber, squaring four feet at its base, and 

 nearly a yard at the top. The " lady oak," mentioned 

 by Sir E. Harley, produced a but of forty feet, and 

 squared five feet throughout its whole length, thus produc- 

 ing twenty tons of timber, a mass of surprising grandeur ! 

 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 five 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 but 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, unapproach- 

 able in modern days ; exceeding in magnitude even 

 that famous larch brought to Rome in the reign of Ti- 

 berius,t 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. 



The cause of infertility in indigenous trees can arise 

 from no defect of construction in the organs of fructi- 

 fication, but from some obstruction, perversion, redun- 

 dancy, or vitiation of the natural powers ; which is par- 



* Philosoph. Trans, as quoted in the Sylva. 

 t Pliny's Natural History, 



