Remarks on Oak Foliage. 



533 



calls them all fine young trees, and says, that when a young woman in service, 

 she well remembers this my place of residence, (to use her own expression,) 

 without stick, or brick. It has also been the example very extensively taken 

 up in the neighbourhood, and tended very widely to the improvement and 

 ornature of the country. Such is cordially the private and patriotic reward 

 of the man who delighteth in trees. 

 Ausust 2\. \SSQ. 



Art. VII, Remarks on Oak Foliage. By the Rev, W. T. Bree. 



The beauty of oak foliage (and who can be insensible to its 

 charms ?) depends, as it appears to me, much less on the fine 

 size and figure of the individual leaves of which it is composed, 

 than at first sight might be imagined ; 94 



and this is a circumstance not un- 

 worthy the attention of those who 

 plant for ornament. When I speak 

 of the " beauty of oak foliage," I 

 would be understood to mean the su- 

 perior beauty of the foliage of one in- 

 dividual tree as compared with that of 

 another ; for the oak is a tree which 

 presents endless variations in its foli- 

 age, all of which are more or less 

 beautiful, though some are, of course, 

 much more so than others. Fig. 94. 

 (reduced to a scale of 2 in. to 1 ft.) 

 represents leaves of our common oak 

 (Quercus 226bur), which are by no 

 means conspicuous of their kind, 

 either in point of size or conform- 

 ation : on the contrary, they may be 

 considered as rather small and shabby 

 specimens. Fig. 95. (reduced to a 

 scale of 2 in. to 1 ft.) represents leaves 

 from a fine variety of Quercus ses- 

 siliflora v they are beautifully and 

 regularly laciniated, somewhat resembling those of the Spanish 

 chestnut, and of a very large size, many of them too large 

 to admit of being depicted of their full dimensions in an 8vo 

 page. One specimen measures, with its footstalk, rather more 

 than loin, in length, by 5 in. in breadth. Now, looking only 

 at these two sets of individual or specimen leaves, any one might 

 naturally expect that the tree which bore the latter of the two 

 would afford the handsomest foliage. But the very reverse is 

 the case ; as may, perhaps, in part, at least, be exemplified by 

 the sketches of a small sprig of each kind which accompanies 

 the leaves in Jigs. 94, 95. The tree from which the sprig ^p-. 94. 

 Vol. XII.— No. 79. r r 



