306 DECIDUOUS TREES. 



small trunk (about five feet in diameter) for so great a ramification 

 of branches, which cover a space upwards of ninety feet in breadth ; 

 but there is a majestic solidity in the first divergence of the great 

 branches which promises in time to make this an oak of the first 

 magnitude, though it is too rotund to be one of great picturesque- 

 ness. Its height is about eighty feet. There are some superb 

 specimens in a pasture field near the grounds of Robert Buist, Esq., 

 south of Philadelphia, which measure nearly one hundred feet 

 across the spread of their branches, with trunks about fifteen feet 

 in circumference, exhibiting all the grand characteristics of full 

 grown oaks. Yet these dimensions are not great compared with 

 those of living British and German oaks, some of which range from 

 forty to sixty feet in circumference of trunk ; others from one 

 hundred and twenty to one hundred and eighty feet across the 

 greatest extension of their branches, and from ninety to one hun- 

 dred and forty feet in height ! One shades an area large enough 

 for two thousand four hundred men to stand in comfortably, and 

 another drips over an area of three thousand square yards, " and 

 would have afforded shelter to a regiment of nearly one thousand 

 horse ! " The trunk of the Cowthorpe oak, which is said to have 

 been the prototype of the Eddystone light-house, exceeds in size, 

 where it meets the earth, the base of that wonderful structure. 

 Many halls in England, of considerable size, are floored with single 

 plank from trees grown on the estates where used. Even as 

 timber trees, our greatest forest-grown oaks are not equal to their 

 venerable European relatives. The author has had a 

 forest oak cut from which ten cords of wood were cut, 

 which is about two-thirds the cubic contents of the largest 

 British trees. This is not an unusual size in our forests ; 

 but, alas, very unusual in trees that are rooted, and low- 

 spreading enough to resist the gales on open ground. 

 Probably the best exemplars of the oak family in our 

 country are the live oaks of the Gulf States ; some of 

 which have been preserved, and rival in the horizontal 

 '^<^<;?^ extension of their branches, the greatest oaks of 

 - England. 



The accompanying cut, Fig. 92, shows the form of 



