294 



THE PLANTEE's GUIDE, 



druggist, the gardener, it is essential. But wliat is by 

 far the most important, in a national point of view, it has 

 furnished, and we trust it will continue fco furnish, the 

 material for those powerful navies which, in British 

 hands, command the ocean. 



The Oak, when young, is rather a delicate plant, and 

 will not thrive without considerable warmth, or, in other 

 words, considerable shelter. As it advances, however, it 

 becomes more hardy ; and, after thirty or forty years, 

 there is no tree that will better resist the elements. 

 When young, it wonderfully adapts itself to almost any 

 kind of soil, although it wdll not attain great magnitude, 

 unless in one that is very deep, loamy, and calcareous. 

 As to picturesque effect, it is susceptible of it in a very 

 superior degree, and is equally fitted for the natural and 

 the artificial landscape. Its singular spread of top enables 

 it to receive great masses of light, while the abrupt and 

 almost rectangular style of its ramification gives it endless 

 variety. 



Perhaps there is no writer, ancient or modern, who 

 has, within a narrow compass, touched with greater force 

 and truth the striking characteristics of the Oak, than 

 Virgil, in his second Georgic. When he speaks of the 

 prodigious vigour with which it shoots aloft into the air, 

 and descends nearly as deep into the bowels of the earth ; 

 of its strength, fitted to resist and brave the wintry 

 storms ; of its surprising longevity, so much surpassing 

 the puny age of man ; of its vast and giant arms, its 

 wide-spreading and gnarled boughs ; we conceive that w^e 

 see before us the very object itself, under its expansive 

 shade of top ; while the ponderous trunk stands in the 

 midst, and sustains the mighty burden. 



''iEsculus imprimis, quae quantum vertice ad auras 

 J2thereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit. 



