298 OUR WOODLAND TREES. 
earth, and sending out, horizontally, powerful 
branches, it is enabled to take a very firm hold 
upon the ground. Hence it is found to be the 
least likely of all our forest Trees to succumb to 
the force of the tempest; and this tenacity is all 
the more remarkable, on account of the large 
surface which is presented to the wind by its 
enormous head of spreading branches. It was 
the form of the Oak trunk which suggested to 
Mr. Smeaton a model for the construction of his 
famous Eddystone Lighthouse, because of his 
belief that it was the form best calculated to resist 
the force of high winds. 
The waviness of the surface, and of the large- 
lobed outline of the roughly oval-shaped leaf of 
Quercus pedunculata gives origin to the common 
name of the species. There is a tortuousness in 
the venation of the leaf of Pedunculata suggestive 
of the tortuousness of the Tree on which it is 
borne, and though in the early spring there is 
beauty in the tender golden green of its colour, 
it is not, and cannot be regarded by comparison 
with leaves of many another Tree, as a handsome 
leaf when it has attained its normal size, and its 
