72 



THE OAK. 



Oak, ^^^vliich is said to have been a favourite 

 tree of William tlie Conqueror, who made this a 

 royal forest, and enacted laws for its preservation. 

 This Oak, which stands near the enclosure of 

 Cranbourn, is twenty-six feet in circumference at 

 three feet from the ground. It is supposed to be 

 the largest and oldest Oak in Windsor Forest, 

 being above a thousand years old. It is quite 

 hollow ; the space within is from seven to eight 

 feet in diameter, and the entrance is about four 

 feet and a half high, and two feet wide. ' We 

 lunched in it,' says Professor Burnet, ^ Sept. 2nd, 

 1829 : it would accommodate at least twenty 

 persons with standing-room : and ten or twelve 

 might sit down comfortably to dinner.' 



The Winfarthing Oak, in Xorfolk, claims an 

 origin yet higher, and is still standing. A writer 

 in the Gardener's Magazine gives the following 

 account of this remarkable tree. Of its age I 

 regret to be unable to give any correct data. It 

 is said to have been called the ^ Old Oak' at the 

 time of AVilliam the Conqueror, but upon what 

 authority I could never learn. Nevertheless, the 

 thing is not impossible, if the speculations of cer- 

 tain miters on the age of trees be at all correct. 

 Mr. South, in one of his letters to the Bath 

 Society (vol. x.), calculates that an Oak tree 

 forty-seven feet in circumference cannot be less 

 than fifteen hundred years old; and Mr. Marsham 

 calculated the Bentley Oak, from its girting thirty - 

 four feet, to be of the same age.* Now aninscrip- 



* Lengthy and somewhat abstruse calculations have been made for 

 ascertaining the age of a tree from the diameter of its trunk. They 

 are not, however, much to be depended on, the rate of growth often _ 

 varying to a very great degree even in trees planted at the same time 



