FAMILIAR TREES. 
THE OAK. 
Quercus Ro'bur L. 
THE Oak is justly the tree on which England prides 
herself with more reason than upon those represen- 
tative, but scarcely indigenous, animals, the lion and 
the unicorn. Whatever we may think of the other 
productions of the poetaster of whom Byron wrote— 
“ Let hoarse Fitzgerald bawl 
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall ?— 
probably everyone will endorse the one line quoted 
from him in the parody in “ Rejected Addresses ”— 
“The tree of freedom is the British Oak.” 
So closely, indeed, is the tree associated in our 
minds with the bygone triumphs of those “ wooden 
walls of England,” the “ hearts of oak,” that the chief 
ideas suggested by the beauty of the tree are apt 
to be those of naval warfare, sailors’ pluck, and 
England’s weathering many a storm. There are, 
nevertheless, suggestions of a less warlike character 
which occur. to the contemplative man as he gazes 
on the monarch of the forest. 
The massive trunk, whose noble proportions 
suggested to Smeaton the design of his Eddystone 
Lighthouse, is an emblein of majestic and sublime 
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