SESSILE-FRUITED OAK. 



257 



head covers a circle whose diameter is more than one 

 hundred and eighteen feet. The great Panshanger Oak, 

 in Herts, is another magnificent tree, of great beauty, 

 and well balanced form, and though upwards of one hun- 

 dred and fifty years old, is only approaching its prime ; 

 when last measured, it was found to contain more than one 

 thousand feet of solid timber. 



Innumerable other thriving specimens of Oaks might 

 be instanced in various parts of the kingdom, as scarce 

 a park exists that does not boast of vigorous trees, in 

 different stages of growth, many of them promising to 

 equal the finest specimens of recorded British Oaks, and 

 which, there is little doubt, if allowed to attain their 

 utmost longevity, will, at some far distant day, emulate 

 the gigantic remains of those we now survey with admi- 

 ration and astonishment. 



At Hedgeley, in Northumberland, we lately saw an Oak 

 thirty-seven years old, that had attained a circumference of 

 five feet six inches about a foot above the ground. It is 

 the produce of an acorn planted in the place where the tree 

 stands. 



During the Saxon rule and even for some time after 

 the Conquest, Oak forests were chiefly valued for the fat- 

 tening of swine, and in times of scarcity, acorns were 

 not disdained as human food. Laws relating to pannage, 

 or the fattening of hogs in the forest, were enacted during 

 the heptarchy ; and by King Ina's statutes, any person 

 wantonly injuring or destroying an Oak tree, was mulcted 

 in a fine, varying in extent according to its size, or the 

 quantity of mast it produced, and we may further judge 

 of the value attached, in those days, to this kind of pro- 

 duce, when we find that the pannage of two hundred hogs 

 was deemed a fit portion for a princess, and that dona- 



