CHAP. cv. CORYLA'CE^E. QUE'RCUS. 1807 



no large oaks were bitten off for two years afterwards. From this relation of 

 what occurred in a place where mice were so abundant, it does not appear to 

 us that any general conclusion can be drawn against the use of acorns instead 

 of plants ; because, according to the same writer, the mice were equally effec- 

 tive in gnawing through trees 6 ft. or 8 ft. high, which, by a parity of reasoning, 

 would afford an argument against the use of oak plants. The relation, however, 

 is of great importance, as showing the numerous natural enemies of the seeds of 

 trees, and also of young trees, which the cultivator requires to guard against. 

 As neither the mice nor the other vermin mentioned are peculiar to the oak 

 tree, we shall not here enter on the different modes of deterring vermin from 

 injuring trees, or of destroying them, but refer our readers to this subject in 

 the Encyclopedia of Arboriculture. 



Pruning and Training. The common oak, in the nursery, will not bear severe 

 pruning ; nor is this of much use with a view to training the plant to a single 

 stem, because, in almost every case of transplanting the oak to where it is finally 

 to remain, it is found to make the clearest stem, and the most rapid progress, 

 by cutting it down to the ground after it has been some years established. In 

 plantations, or in single rows, the oak, even when a considerable tree, does 

 not bear pruning and lopping so readily as the elm ; but still it may be trained 

 to a single stem, which should be of considerable height when the object is to 

 produce plank timber ; but short, when the object is to throw strength into 

 the head, in order to produce crooked pieces for ship-building. These crooked 

 pieces for ship timber are generally the result of accident ; but there seems 

 to be no reason why trees should not be trained by art to produce crooked 

 stems, as well as straight ones. We are informed that, in the government 

 plantations, in the Forest of Dean, there are some hundreds of acres of planted 

 oaks, which have never been pruned in the slightest degree, that have per- 

 fectly clear trunks from 50 ft. to 60 ft. in height. These trees were planted 

 thick, towards the end of the last century, and were gradually thinned out, 

 as they advanced in size ; and their side branches have died off, being 

 suffocated by the surrounding trees. We shall notice here the modes which 

 have been adopted or recommended for producing crooked, or what is called 

 knee, timber, in the case of the oak; and, in our chapter on training trees ge- 

 nerally, in our Encyclopaedia of Arboriculture^ we shall go into details. 



Training the Oak for crooked, or Knee y Timber. Various schemes 'of training 

 and pruning the oak, so as to produce crooked limbs of large dimensions, have 

 been proposed by Marshall, Pontey, Billington, Matthew, and other writers. 

 South, in the Bath Society's Papers, thus accounts for the production of 

 crooked timber by natural means : " Trees," he says, " dispersed over open 

 commons and extensive wastes, have hitherto produced the choicest timber." 

 Whoever traverses a woody waste, " with the eye of curiosity awake, must 

 remark that almost every thorn becomes a nurse for a timber tree. Acorns, 

 or beech mast, or sometimes both, dropped by birds or squirrels, vegetate 

 freely under the shade and protection of the bushes, till they rise above the 

 bite of cattle. Small groups and single trees are thus produced; their guar- 

 dian thorns, when overpowered, perishing. Then the timber trees having 

 open space for their roots to range in, their growth becomes rapid, their bodies 

 bulky, their limbs large and extensive ; cattle resort to them for shelter, enrich 

 the ground with their droppings ; and the timber, deriving advantage from the 

 manure, becomes productive of knees, crooks, and compass pieces, the chief 

 requisites in naval architecture." The French, this writer observes, have 

 endeavoured to form kneed timber artificially, " by suspending weights to the 

 heads of tender saplings, bowing them hastily to the ground ; which is not only 

 an expensive, but an inefficacious method ; for it injures the plant, by straining 

 the bark and rupturing the sap-vessels." (Bath Soc. Papers, vol. vi. p. 54.) 

 Preferring the natural method of producing crooked timber, Mr. South con- 

 tinues, " Parks and pleasure-grounds might be rendered enchantingly beautiful 

 by being planted with clumps of quicksets, black thorns, hollies, &c., inter- 

 spersed here and there, for the protection of acorns purposed to be sown 



