1294 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



The Catalonian forests furnish the best quality of cork, that used for champagne 

 bottles; and it was here that about 150 years ago, at San Lorenzo de la Muga, the 

 trees were first artificially treated, so as to produce a better quality of cork than the 

 natural bark affords. Throughout Spain, the forests are poorly treated; natural 

 regeneration is rendered nearly impossible by grazing animals, and artificial planta- 

 tions are unknown. \^- "•) 



In Portugal, where, according to Lefebvre, the largest amount of cork is pro- 

 duced, the forests are well cared for, and many new plantations are made. In 

 central and southern Portugal the cork oak is one of the commonest and most 

 widely cultivated trees, principally on account of the value of its bark, but also for 

 its acorns. It is usually planted on the drier lands which are ploughed for wheat 

 at intervals of two or three years, and are grazed by sheep and pigs at other times. 



In the better cultivated districts it is barked at intervals of eight to ten years, 

 and from about twenty-five to thirty years up to a hundred and fifty or more, when 

 the quality of the cork begins to decline. The bark is taken off the trunk and lower 

 branches down to about 6 in. in diameter, and the trees so treated have a very 

 different appearance to wild or unbarked trees, being comparatively smooth and 

 reddish brown in colour. In the woods near Cintra, on Sir Frederick Cook's 

 property, there are many large and very picturesque trees, which are never barked, 

 and have wide-spreading branches, but they do not here attain anything like the size 

 that they do farther inland, where the soil is stronger and the climate drier. 



On the property of Senhor Suares Mendes, near Abrantes, where the lower parts 

 of the valleys running back into the plateau were full of splendid cork oaks, I 

 measured a magnificent tree nearly 60 ft. high, with a trunk about 12 ft. in girth, 

 dividing at about 12 ft. into twenty large branches, which covered an area 25 paces 

 in diameter. Another, which some years previously had been severely lopped, 

 was about 25 ft. in girth, and though of great age seemed to be perfectly sound. 

 In this valley, which reminded me somewhat of the foothills in San Bernardino 

 county, California, the cork trees were scattered at irregular intervals, as though 

 self-sown, and gave the effect of old oaks in an English park. Their produce is 

 very valuable, and I was told by Mr. Percy Ellis of Lisbon, who has a large cork 

 factory, that tTiere was much difference in the quality in different parts of the 

 country, but that the cork of Alemtejo was perhaps equal, if not superior to any in 

 the world. Specimens of the different qualities showing the injuries produced by 

 various causes, which he was good enough to give me, are now in the Cambridge 

 Forestry Museum. 



I heard of still larger trees than those which I have mentioned ; one between 

 Niza and Povoa de Meadas, in Alemtejo, supposed to be 300 years old and growing 

 on granite soil, which seems to suit this tree best, was 18 metres high by 7-20 metres 

 in girth, the diameter of the crown 28 metres ; another at St. Anna de Malto in the 

 commune of Concho, 5 metres in girth, produced in 1879, 1465 kilos, and in 1889, 

 1755 kilos (nearly two tons) of cork. A third, near the Chapel of San Gongalo, on 

 the road to Palonella, 10 miles south of Lisbon, of which a photograph is given 

 in Bull Soc. Tosc. aHort. ser. ii. vol. ii. p. 19 (1887), was 18 m. high by 9 m. in 



