THE OAK. y 



attain any great height, being more remarkable for the 

 thickness of its bole, and its widely-spread head. Excep- 

 tions, however, are not wanting. In the Duke of Port- 

 land's park, at Welbeck, there stood, in 1790, an Oak, 

 called " The Duke's walking-stick," which was a hundred 

 and eleven feet high, the trunk rising to the height of 

 seventy feet before it formed a head. Others nearly 

 equalling this have been noticed. 



A remarkable characteristic of the Oak is the stoutness 

 of its limbs. " We know no tree, except, perhaps, the 

 Cedar of Lebanon, so remarkable in this respect. The 

 limbs of most trees spring from the trunk ; in the Oak 

 they may be rather said to divide from it ; for they 

 generally carry with them a great share of the substance 

 of the stem : you often scarcely know which is stem and 

 which is branch ; and towards the top, the stem is entirely 

 lost in the branches. This gives peculiar propriety to the 

 epithet 'fortes,' in characterising the branches of the Oak; 

 and hence its sinewy elbows are of such peculiar use in 

 ship-building. AVhoever, therefore, does not mark the 

 fortes ramos of the Oak, might as well, in painting a 

 Hercules, omit his muscles. But I speak only of the 

 hardy veterans of the forest. In the effeminate nurslings 

 of the grove we have not this appearance. There the tree 

 is all stem drawn up into height. When we characterise 

 a tree, we consider it in its natural state, insulated, and 

 without any lateral pressure. In a forest, trees naturally 

 grow in that manner ; the seniors depress all the juniors 

 that attempt to rise near them ; but in a planted grove all 

 grow up together, and none can exert any power over another. 



" The next characteristic of the Oak is the twisting of 

 its branches. Examine the Ash, the Elm, the Beech, or 

 almost any other tree, and you may observe in what 

 direct and straight lines the branches in each shoot from 

 the stem; whereas the limbs of an Oak are continually 

 twisting here and there in various contortions, and, like 

 the course of a river, sport and play in every possible 

 B 3 



