182 OAK. 



Gilpin observes, that there are " a few venerable Oaks in 

 the New Forest, that chronicle upon their furrowed trunks ages 

 before the Conquest." An Oak, figured in Evelyn's Sylva, was 

 felled at Withy Park, Shropshire, in 1697, which was nine feet 

 in diameter, contained twenty-eight tons of timber in the body 

 alone, and the spread of the top from bough to bough, was one 

 hundred and forty-four feet. The Greendale Oak, in Welbeck 

 Park, measures thirty-five feet in circumference, near the base, 

 and is supposed to be full seven hundred years old. Dr. Plott 

 mentions an Oak at Norbury, the girth of which was forty-five 

 feet ; and another at Keicot, under the shade of which 3474 

 men could stand. 



The Fairlop Oak in Hainault forest, Essex, was an immense 

 tree, with branches overspreading an area of three hundred feet. 

 It is now destroyed, but a fair is still held on the spot where it 

 formerly stood. One of the largest Oaks of which there is any 

 record, was in Dorsetshire. Its circumference was sixty-eight 

 feet, and the cavity which was sixteen feet long, and twenty feet 

 high, was about the time of the Commonwealth used by an old 

 man for the entertainment of travellers. In Ampthill Park, 

 Beds., there is a fine specimen measuring forty feet in circum- 

 ference at the base, and is supposed to be one thousand years 

 old. Dryden assigns nine centuries to the Oak : — 



" The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees, 

 Shoots rising np and spreads by slow degrees ; 

 Three centuries he grows, and three he stays 

 Supreme in state, and in three more decays." 



Virgil's lines have been often paraphrased, 



" Quantum vertice ad auras 



TEthereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit. " 



JEn. iv. v. 445. 



" In Britain, although it is unknown that acorns ever formed 

 the common food * of the inhabitants, it was for them alone 

 that the oak was prized, as furnishing the chief support of the 

 large herds of swine on which our forefathers fed. Woods of 

 old were valued according to the number of hogs they could 

 fatten, and so rigidly were the forest lands surveyed, that in 



* The Oaks which bear edible acorns are the Evergreen Oak ( Q. Ilex), 

 celebrated by Virgil ; Q. Ballota and Esculus, natives of Barbary and Spain ; 

 Q. castanea, found on the banks of the Delaware ; and several others. 



