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A well-marked variety of the common oak is the Cypress oak> 

 in which the branches point upwards. It has all the appearance 

 of a well-grown Lombardy poplar. A tree of this at Melbury 

 Park, near Dorchester, measures 65ft. in height with a girth of 

 3ft. 8in. Both in foliage and fruit it does not differ in any way 

 from the ordinary oak. There is a purple leaved oak, a bronze 

 leaved oak, and several with variegated leaves — white, yellow, and 

 pink. 



Pliny (A.D. 23-79) describes in detail the religious honour 

 paid to the oak in Britain, and asserts that the Druids, as children 

 of the oak, were so called from the Greek name for that tree. He 

 says that the Druids held that the mistletoe was the most sacred 

 plant provided it grew upon an oak — which it did very rarely. 

 Although Mr. Elwes gives a list of twenty-three oaks in England 

 reputed as bearing mistletoe, he was only able to verify two of 

 them by personal inspection. The finest mistletoe oaks were- 

 shown him by Sir George Cornwall at Bredwardine, in Hereford- 

 shire in 1902. Mistletoe was growing on this in no less than 

 fifteen different places. The occurrence of a mistletoe on an oak 

 at Hackwood Park, south of Basingstoke, was published in the 

 "Leisure Hour" in 1873. By the kindness of the Rev. G. 

 Sampson, of Ramsdell Vicarage, photographs of three growths 

 of mistletoe on oaks at Hackwood Park have lately been com- 

 municated to me. Miss Ida M. Roper, F.L.S., discovered a 

 magnificent bunch of mistletoe on an oak, in Leigh Wood, facing 

 the gorge at Clifton, near Bristol, in 191 5. The mistletoe's 

 favourite trees are black poplars. At Charborough Park a common 

 maple was recently seen covered with mistletoe. Mistletoe also 

 occurs on limes, apple trees (rarely on pear trees), walnuts, horse- 

 chestnuts, elms, willows, medlars, and almond trees. Mr. Back- 

 house informs me he has seen mistletoe on a Scotch fir in Switzer- 

 land. It has also been reported on Corsican pine. 



The Holm oak or Ilex is regarded as one of the finest of our 

 evergreen trees. Its foliage is most abundant and its branches 

 form heavy masses on the tree. It is native of Southern Europe, 

 and was brought to this country about the sixteenth century, It 

 is one of the most familiar trees along the South Coast and thrives 

 well near the sea, where it usuallv forms a dense flat-headed bush. 

 Inland it forms more erect and handsomer trees. Mr. Bean men- 

 tions its one defect as a tree in a trim garden, viz., that it sheds 

 its leaves of the previous vear in May and Tune, making an un- 

 sightly litter dav by day. One way of avoiding this, he suggests, 

 would be to plant the ground underneath with ivy amongst which 

 the leaves fall and automatically disaopear. There is a fine 

 avenue of the evergreen oak leading from the main entrance of 

 Highcliffe Castle to Highcliffe Church. In the grounds of the 

 Castle are distributed some of the finest Ilex trees in the country. 



Very closely allied to the Ilex is the Cork oak. This produces 

 the cork of commerce and is occasionallv grown as a curiosity in 

 the southern counties. The largest tree I have seen of this was at 



