278 THE BEST OF OAKS 



variety; yet nurserymen have ceased to supply it. 

 Unluckily, two leading authorities on forestry, Messrs 

 Brown and Michie, have written in favour of what they 

 call the English oak that is, Q. pedunculata and 

 their opinion has driven out the other and better tree. 



It is a mistake to suppose that the southern form is 

 exclusively the true English oak. Shakespeare's oaks 

 the ' Warwickshire weed ' is the durmast or northern 

 form, as any one may see by inspecting the old trees in 

 the Forest of Arden, where by the by, blown trees are 

 being replaced by the inferior variety. The greater 

 beauty of the durmast is very apparent at this season, 

 when the foliage has assumed its] autumn gold. This 

 contrast may be well observed in Knole Park, near 

 Sevenoaks, where the oaks scattered through the park 

 are of the southern variety, but there is a double avenue 

 of splendid durmast leading up to the house. The boles 

 and limbs of these trees are clean grown and shapely, 

 unlike the gnarled and fantastic forms assumed by 

 the other variety, the predominance of which in the 

 south I am inclined to attribute partly to the heavier 

 drafts made upon the durmast to supply the wants of 

 the navy at the close of the eighteenth century and 

 beginning of the nineteenth. 



