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A DISCOURSE 



III. park, worth six thousand pounds, it is believed there were a thousand 

 much above that value, since, in what is now inclosed, it is evident 

 touching one hundred worth a thousand pounds. I am informed that an 

 Oak, (1 think in Shropshire,) growing lately in a copse of my Lord 

 Craven's, yielded nineteen tons and a half of timber, twenty-three cord 

 of fire-wood, two load of brush, and two load of bark : and my worthy 

 friend, Leonard Pinckney, Esq, late first clerk of his majesty's kitchen, 

 did assure me, that one John Garland built a very handsome barn, 

 containing five bays, with pan, posts, beams, spars, &c. of one sole 

 tree, growing in Worksop park. I will close this with an instance which 

 I greatly value, because it is transmitted to me from that honourable 

 and noble person, Sir Edward Harley. " I am" says he " assured by an 

 inquisition taken about three hundred years since, that a park of mine, 

 and some adjacent woods, had not then a tree capable to bear acorns ; yet 

 that very park I have seen full of great Oaks, and most of them in the 

 extremest wane of decay. The trunk of one of these Oaks afforded so 

 much timber, as upon the place would have yielded fifteen pounds, and 

 did completely seat with wainscot-pews a whole church. You may 

 please," says he, writing to Sir Robert Murray, " to remember when you 

 were here, you took notice of a large tree, newly fallen ; when it was 

 wrought up, it proved very hollow and unsound : one of its cavities con- 

 tained two hogsheads of water : another was filled with better stuff, wax 

 and honey : notwithstanding all defects, it yielded, besides three tons 

 of timber, twenty-three cords of wood. But my own trees are but chips 

 in comparison of a tree in the neighbourhood, in which every foot for- 

 ward, one with another, was half a ton of timber ; it bore five feet squarfe, 

 forty feet long, and contained twenty ton of timber ; most of it sold for 

 one pound per ton ; besides that, the boughs afforded twenty-five cords 

 of fuel wood : this was called the Lady-Oak. Is it not pity such goodly 

 creatures should be devoted to Vulcan ?" So far this noble gentleman, 

 to which I would add Dira, a deep execration of iron mills, and I had 

 almost said iron-masters too, 



Quos ego— sed raotos prsestat componere— 



for I should never finish, to pursue these instances through our once 

 goodly magazines of timber for all uses, growing in this our native 

 country, comparable, as I said, to any we can produce of elder times. 



