ACORN. 9 



Lucan compares Pompey to an old oak, hung with su- 

 perb trophies. 



The oak is a tree of slow growth, requiring a century 

 before it will arrive to its full perfection. 



In Dodsley's Annual Register for 1758, p. 116, men- 

 tion is made of an oak in Langley-wood, near Downton, 

 Wilts, the property of the Bishop of Salisbury, sup- 

 posed to be of near one thousand years growth. It was 

 six feet two inches in diameter, contained about ten tons 

 of timber, and was sold for forty pounds. 



In the St. James's Chronicle, No. 5038, it is said that 

 an oak was felled a few days before at Morley, in Cheshire,, 

 which produced upwards of a thousand measurable feet of 

 timber. Its girth was fourteen yards, and one branch con- 

 tained two hundred feet. Its existence could be traced 

 back for eight hundred years, and it was supposed to be 

 the largest tree in England ; as a proof of it, the trunk 

 had been used some years for housing cattle, and it is 

 said Edward the Black Prince once dined under it. 



Pliny, in his Natural History, states, that hard by 

 the city of Ilium, there were oaks near the tomb of 

 Ilius, which were planted from acorns when Troy was 

 first called Ilium. He also says, " the great forest 

 Hercynia is full of large oaks, that have never been 

 topped or lopped. It is supposed," adds this naturalist, 

 " that they have been there ever since the creation of the 

 world, and (in regard to their immortality) surmounting 

 all miracles whatever. The roots of these trees run 

 and spread so far within the ground that they meet each 

 other, in which encounter they make such resistance, that 

 they swell and rise upwards to a great height, in the form 

 of arches." 



Linnaeus mentions fourteen species of the oak-tree ; 

 Miller extended them to twenty-three; and Aitoii de- 



