256 CORYLACE^. 



have lain for many years in that situation, as a fine old 

 birch wood grew upon the ground it had occupied ; 

 Sir T. D. Lauder adds, that the stock whereon this 

 Oak had grown and close to which it lay, was worn away 

 in the centre, and so hollowed out as to encircle a large 

 and thriving self-sown birch tree of more than a foot in 

 diameter. 



Of Oaks, still in vigorous health and increasing in size, 

 the Squitch bank Oak, in Bagot Park, Staffordshire, the 

 seat of Lord Bagot, seems one of the largest, being up- 

 wards of forty-three feet in circumference at the base, 

 and sixty-one feet high ; its solid contents, a few years 

 ago, were found to exceed one thousand and twelve feet. 

 The Beggars 1 Oak, in the same Park, is also a fresh and 

 vigorous tree, with a trunk upwards of twenty-seven feet 

 in circumference at five feet from the ground ; it contains 

 eight hundred and seventy-seven cubic feet of timber, 

 and Sir T. D. Lauder informs us would have produced, 

 according to the price offered for it in 1812, 202?. 14s. 

 9d. At Hazelgrove, in Somersetshire, is a noble Oak, 

 eighty feet in height, and which measures thirty feet in 

 circumference at four feet from the ground ; this tree 

 contains eight hundred and sixty-three feet of timber. 

 At Nettlecombe Court, in the same county, is another Oak, 

 eighty-five feet high, seventeen in circumference near 

 the ground, and which contains six hundred cubic feet 

 of timber. The Woolton Oak, Buckinghamshire, possesses 

 all the characteristics of a magnificent and picturesque 

 tree, and by some is considered one of the finest in Eng- 

 land, even surpassing, in characteristic beauty, the Chandos 

 Oak, which grows in the same county, in the grounds 

 of Michenden House ; this tree is now in the highest 

 health and vigour, and its wide-spreading, umbrageous 



