PROFITABLE TIMBER TREES 61 



out from time to time to make room for the oaks. Marshall 

 publishes a letter written by Speechly, gardener to the Duke 

 of Portland at Welbeck, to Dr. Hunter, the editor of an 

 edition of Evelyn's Sylva, in which the system of sowing oak 

 and other trees on the Welbeck estate is described. It is 

 there stated that the birch had been found a valuable nurse 

 to the oak. The ground was first planted with two thousand 

 plants of various kinds to the acre, and then acorns were sown 

 all over the ground in short drills of about a foot in length, 

 and the writer is of the opinion that the plants from these 

 acorns make the best trees. 



Until the last hundred years or so the British oak was 

 considered the secret of our maritime supremacy, and it took 

 equal if not greater rank with coal and iron as the founda- 

 tion of our commercial prosperity. While all other timber 

 trees had to rub along as best they could, the oak seems to 

 have always received a fair share of protection from the old 

 forest laws and legislation of a later date, as far as it was 

 possible to protect trees by Act of Parliament. If we inquire 

 into the causes which brought this tree into general popular- 

 ity in more modern times, the explanation is not far to seek. 

 In the old days builders of houses and ships had one great 

 aim in view that of investing their work with strength 

 and durability. Economy of time was not the all-important 

 object that it is to-day, and expense was made subordinate 

 to quality of workmanship. The early craftsmen soon dis- 

 covered that, of all British trees, oak alone combined the three 

 essentials for constructive purposes size, strength, and dura- 

 bility. Ash could give them strength and size, but not the 

 rigidity and durability necessary for solid work. Yew could 

 furnish durability but not size, while no other timber tree 

 had the necessary qualifications for such work. The builder 

 of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries found oak timber at 

 his call and as easily procured as any, and it is hardly con- 

 ceivable that he should have chosen any other for his work. 

 That his choice was justified we have the proof before us 

 to-day, and many an old farm and manor house still exists 

 in a habitable condition after the lapse of five hundred years. 



At the present time, however, British oak no longer holds 

 the high place it occupied in olden days. Its timber retains 



