A HISTORY OF SURREY 



and sometimes of lime given it. At the last ploughing it is ridged up so as to keep it 

 as dry as possible during the winter. Wheat is then sown in it, at the usual season, 

 and after the wheat is well harrowed in, acorns are put in with a dibble, at about one 

 foot distant from each other. When the wheat is reaped in the ensuing Autumn, the 

 seedling oaks are not sufficiently high to be cut by the sickle ; the stubble serves as a 

 kind of protection to them during the winter ; and in two or three ysars after the 

 acorns are put in, the seedling plants are fit to be transplanted.' 



That so simple and practical a method could be adopted about a 

 hundred years ago proves that rabbits were not as plentiful then as they 

 are now, because it would be impossible to succeed in raising oak seed- 

 lings in this manner under existing circumstances — unless of course the 

 field were to be efficiently protected by a rabbit-proof wire fence. 



For raising hedgerow timber, of which there is a very large 

 quantity throughout Surrey, and for filling up blanks in the woods, the 

 method of layering, often locally called ' plashing,' is still commonly prac- 

 tised both here and in the adjoining counties of Hants, Sussex and Kent, 

 very much as it was about a hundred years ago. Shoots up to about 

 the thickness of a man's wrist are cut half through close to the ground, 

 then bent down and pegged with branch-crooks, and finally covered 

 with earth and turf. A strong flush of shoots soon springs from the 

 buds along the ' plasher,' and this can be cut into sections to form 

 several plants if desired for transplanting. Ash, chestnut, alder, willow, 

 and hazel can be very speedily multiplied in this way ; but the method 

 is also applied to oak, maple and sycamore, and other broad-leaved trees. 



Oak is par excellence the timber tree of Surrey. Sixty years ago 

 the Grindstone Oak, near Farnham, although then fast waning to decay, 

 was one of the largest oak trees known to exist in Britain. It had 

 a girth of 48 feet near the ground, and of 33 feet at three feet above 

 that. There were only three other oaks of larger girth known in this 

 country, these being the Cowthorpe Oak, Yorkshire (78 feet), the 

 Merton Oak, Norfolk (63 feet), and the Hempstead Oak, Essex (53 

 feet).' Fine old oak trees abound in Richmond Great Park, but many of 

 them are unfortunately now ' stag-headed ' and dead in the crown, thus 

 exhibiting the first unmistakable symptoms of senile decay' ; and there is 

 no possibility of anything being done to rejuvenate them. Several of 

 the oaks on the western side of the park girth over 20 feet (the largest 

 measured by me being 20ft. gins.) ; and all of them are old pollards. 

 The chief of the other kinds of trees throughout the county are beech, 

 ash, elm, maple, sycamore, larch and pine in the woodlands, ash and elm 

 chiefly in the hedgerows. The beech is of course the chief tree in the 

 highwoods on the chalk hills, but it attains its finest dimensions on the 

 more fertile sandy loams. Fine specimens are to be seen on the Wotton 



» London's Arboretum et Frutketum Britannuum, vol. iii. (1844), pp. 170 and 175. 



» One of the finest oaks in Surrey is at Tilford, and one of the largest girth is a stump, now 

 near!)' dead, behind the waU of Cockshotts firm at the foot of Leith Hill. The Tilford oak, called 

 the King's Oak, is popularly supposed to be the same as one mentioned in a charter of Henry de Blois 

 in the twelfth century. As that was then a notable tree, this oak, still flourishing, is perhaps its succes- 

 sor on the same spot. — Ed. 



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