AMONG THE OAKS 119 



oak, while on drier land, particularly when of 

 a limy nature, the beech is its most useful 

 associate. 



Accurate data as to the rate of growth of 

 oak in British woods are not yet available on a 

 sufficiently large scale to enable tables of average 

 height, girth, and cubic contents to be framed 

 for any or each class of soil. About sixty years 

 ago the estimate was that an oak growing on 

 a good soil and in a favourable situation should 

 contain about a ton of timber at seventy-five 

 years of age. In the oak woods of Hanover 

 the average yield on the better classes of soil 

 Caries from about fifty to seventy-five cubic feet 

 per acre per annum for mature crops of pure 

 oak harvested at 1 60 years of age ; but this 

 is of actual solid cubic contents, which must be 

 reduced by more than one-fifth before it can 

 be brought to the level of the l square of the 

 quarter-girth ' method employed in estimating 

 the cubic contents of standing trees or timber 

 in the log in Britain. How careful one must 

 be, however, in accepting statistics of this sort 

 is shown by the fact that the total contents 

 above the soil of highwoods of pure oak can 



