HOW TO GllOW GOOD TIMBER. 279 



work which should be in the hands of all lovers of the 

 beautiful natural objects of which it treats, describes 

 the finding of some bog oaks, which would almost 

 connect the present race with a fossilized past : — 



At the Linden, the seat of C. W. Bigge, Esq., the trunk of a mag- 

 nificent oak was extracted from a peat moss that fills a small basin 

 or hollow, evidently produced by the stagnation of a stream, which 

 now passes through it, and which, at some distant period, had been 

 dammed back by the fall of the trees upon its margins. This oak was 

 covered by a layer of the peat to the depth of about three feet, and 

 was discovered by probing the moss. The trunk, with a small portion 

 of one of the larger limbs, was with great labour and difficulty 

 dragged from its miry bed. The contents of the portion recovered 

 contained 515 cubic feet, although the whole of the sap-wood had 

 perished. The timber was perfectly sound, and the tree, by whatever 

 accident it had been overthrown, had fallen in the vigour of its 

 growth. When sawn up, the interior planks were found of a deep 

 rich brown colour ; those nearer the exterior darker, or approaching 

 to black. A variety of elegant furniture has been made from the 

 wood ; but it has been found necessary, for fine cabinet-work, to have 

 it cut into veneers, for, when worked in bulk, it is apt to crack and 

 become warped. Remains of other huge oaks have also been met 

 with on the banks of the Tyne, the Alne, and other rivers, as well as 

 in various bogs and morasses ; and we mention these instances to 

 show that in a district where, at the present day, nothing but 

 recently-planted oak or dwarfish timber from stock-shoots exists, in 

 former times the monarch of the forest grew luxuriantly, and attained 

 a splendid development ; and also as an inducement to the planter 

 not to neglect the liberal insertion of this national tree wherever 

 soil and situation are found congenial to its growth. In other parts 

 of England, the oak still grows in all its native magnificence of form 

 and dimensions, and the remains of those ancient forests, which are 

 chronicled by our earliest writers, and which, in the time of our 

 Saxon ancestors, spread over the greater portion of the country, are 

 still to be traced in the venerable but living relics of enormous oaks, 

 many of which are supposed to number more than a thousand years. 



Not to neglect to plant the national tree ! We hope 



