22 



SYLVA BRITANNICA. 



THE BULL OAK 



in Wedgenock Park, Warwickshire, is the property 

 of the Earl of Warwick. "Bull-Oaks," says Mr. 

 South, whose remarks on the growth of Oaks, as 

 elicited by his observations on this tree, we have 

 just given, " are thus denominated from the no un- 

 common circumstance of bulls taking shelter within 

 them ; which these animals effect, not by going in 

 and turning round, but by retreating backwards 

 into the cavity, till the head, only, projects at the 

 aperture. The one I am about to particularize stands 

 in the middle of a pasture, bears the most venerable 

 marks of antiquity, gives the name compounded 

 of itself and its situation to the farm on which it 

 grows, viz. Oakly Farm, and was the favourite retreat 

 of a bull. Twenty people, old and young, have 

 crowded into it at a time ; a calf being shut up there 

 for convenience, its dam, a two-year-old heifer, 

 constantly went in to suckle it, and left sufficient 

 room for milking her. It is supposed to be near a 

 thousand years old ; the body is nothing but a shell, 

 covered with burly protuberances ; the upper part 

 of the shaft is hollow like a chimney ; it has been 

 mutilated of all its limbs, but from their stumps 

 arise a number of small branches, forming a bushy 

 head, so remarkable for fertility, that in years of 

 plenty it has produced two sacks of acorns in a sea- 



