OF FOREST-TREES. 



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remarkable from the dedication of the ingenious planter (if tradition hold) cHAP. 

 the famous English bard, Geoffrey Chaucer ; of which one was called 

 the king's, another the queen's, and a third Chaucer's Oak. The first 

 of these was fifty feet in height before any bough or knot appeared, and 

 cut five feet square at the butt end, all clear timber. The queen's was 

 felled since the wars, and held forty feet of excellent timber, straight as 

 an arrow in growth and grain, and cutting four feet at the stub, and near 

 a yard at the top ; besides a fork of almost ten feet clear timber above 

 the shaft, which was crowned with a shady tuft of boughs, amongst 

 which, some were on each side curved like rams' horns, as if they had 

 been so industriously bent by hand. This Oak was of a kind so 

 excellent, cutting a grain clear as any clap-board, (as appeared in the 

 wainscot which was made thereof,) that it is a thousand pities some 

 seminary of the acorns had not been propagated, to preserve the species. 

 Chaucer's Oak, though it were not of these dimensions, yet was it a very 

 goodly tree : and this account I received from my most honoured friend 

 Phil. Packer, Esq. whose father (as lately the gentleman his brother) was 

 proprietor of this park : but that which 1 would further remark, upon this 

 occasion, is the bulk and stature to which an Oak may possibly arrive 

 within less than three hundred years, since it is not so long that our poet 

 flourished, (being in the reign of king Edward III.) if at least he were 

 indeed the planter of those trees, as it is confidently affirmed. I will not 

 labour much in this inquiry, because an implicit faith is here of great 

 encouragement ; and it is not to be conceived what trees of a good 

 kind, and in apt soil, will perform in a few years ; and this, 1 am 

 informed, is a sort of gravelly clay, moistened with small and frequent 

 springs. In the meanwhile, I have often wished that gentlemen were 

 more curious of transmitting to posterity such records, by noting the 

 years when they begin any considerable plantation, that the ages to 

 come may have both the satisfaction and encouragement by more accurate 

 and certain calculations. Henry Ranjovius planted a grove in Ditmarsh, 

 anno 1580, of Oak, Fir, Beech, Birch, &c. and erected a stone with this 

 inscription, (which I mention not for its elegancy, but example) Dom. 

 1580. Quercus, Ahietes, Betulas, 8^c. plantamt: annum et initium sationis 

 adscrihi jussit, ut earum cetatem exploraret posteritas ; quod in omnia 

 wbis scECula ceternce Divinitati commenclat, as I find recorded by that 

 industrious genealogist, Scipio Amiratus of Florence. But the only 

 instance I know of the like in our own country is in the park of Althorp 



