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CORYLACE^:. 



picturesque beauty of the Oak, contained in the " Mag. 

 of Nat. Hist.," after pointing to the division of the 

 European trees into four forms or classes, viz., the round, 

 the spiry, the shaggy, and the slender topped, thus speaks 

 of the Oak. " In the first of these classes, (the round 

 topped,) foremost in dignity and grandeur, the Oak stands 

 preeminent, and, like the lion among beasts, is the un- 

 doubted lord of the forest. Beauty, united with strength, 

 characterizes all its parts. The leaves, elegant in their 

 outline, are strongly ribbed and firmly attached to the 

 spray, which, although thin and excursive, is yet bold 

 and determined in its angles, whilst the abrupt and tor- 

 tuous irregularity of its massive branches admirably con- 

 trasts with the general richness and density of its clustered 

 foliage. " , 



The horizontal direction of the branches, their strong, 

 tortuous, and sinewy aspect, the angular interwoven nature 

 of the spray, are all suited to the pencil, and give to the 

 Oak, even in its denuded state, a richness of appearance 

 possessed by no other tree. Its foliage, also, is such as 

 a painter likes to delineate, being richly tufted and clus- 

 tered together, forming those masses which produce the 

 finest effect of light and shade, and its colour is warm, 

 rich, and pleasing, from the period that the leaves first 

 burst their cerements to the rich russet tints they ac- 

 quire previously to their fall in autumn. The tufting of the 

 foliage, we may remark, is much more conspicuous in the 

 peduncled Oak, than in the sessile-fruited variety, and 

 on this account the former surpasses its rival in pictu- 

 resque effect, for, as the Rev. W. T. Bree observes, " the 

 leaves of the Quer. pedunculata, though rather small, are 

 very numerous and grow close to the spray, clustered in 

 those dense masses which constitute one of the charac 



