270 THE OAK. 
two fine trees stand on the property of the Marquis of Lothian; 
one called the “ King of the Woods” stands seventy-three feet 
high, and having had shelter in its youth, it has a clean and 
branchless trunk, forty-three feet long, and seventeen feet in 
circumference above the swell of its roots. The other oak, 
called the “ Capon Tree,” possesses quite a different character ; 
it has grown in a situation more exposed, and its figure is 
consequently more bushy. The circumference of its trunk, 
two feet from the ground, is twenty-six feet. The height 
of the tree is fifty-six feet, and the space occupied by 
the spread of its boughs is nearly 100 feet in diameter. 
Several centuries ago, when Scotland was more closely 
covered with timber, specimens of British oak were pro- 
duced in it far finer than those which flourish at the 
present time. Of this fact the gigantic trunks and pon- 
derous limbs which are frequently discovered imbedded in 
the soil throughout the country are the infallible historians, 
and indicate by their age and figure that the trees enjoyed 
ample space and a sufficient shelter,—elements indispensable 
to the growth of large oak timber. 
One of the finest oak forests in Scotland is that at Darnaway, 
in Morayshire. Between the years 1830 and 1840 the sales 
of timber and bark ranged from £4000 to £5000 yearly. The 
oak timber usually sold at from 2s. to 3s. per cubical foot, and 
bark varied from £6 to £9 per ton. The age of the timber 
ranged from thirty to eighty years; and, after paying every 
expense during the growth of the timber, the revenue of the 
forest per acre was double that of the finest arable land in the 
country. 
Although the oak does not while young advance so rapidly 
as some other hard-wooded trees, yet it is by no means an 
unprofitable tree. During the early part of its growth in the 
forest it is seldom or never planted by itself, but interspersed 
and nursed with other sorts, which generally come to be of 
some value on being removed; and after the oak is about 
twenty years of age, it generally grows as fast as most other 
sorts of hard-wooded trees, and its bark is always found to be 
