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feet 8 inches in circumference^ at three feet from the ground. 

 The Crawley Elm on the road to Brighton, measures 61 feet 

 in circumference at the ground. 



A stately forest is one of the grandest sights in the crea- 

 tion, and an insulated tree the most beautiful. 



^ Hail ! old Patrician trees, so great and good, 



Hail ! ye Plebeian underwood. 



No tree in all the grove but has its charms, and each its 

 charm peculiar. There is again the Shelton Oak, or Owen 

 Glendower's Observatory, on the road side near Shrewsbury. 

 Mr. Billington presented to Her Majesty two oak plants 

 grown from the acorns of this tree, which are planted in 

 the gardens at Buckingham Palace. The Duke of Athol's 

 larches, at Dunkeld, are known to every one in that part of 

 Scotland ; they have grown upwards of 80 feet in seventy 

 years. Twenty of them, when felled at the age of sixty- 

 four years, exceeded 100 feet in length each ; and in another 

 instance eleven of these trees were sold for £150 to ship- 

 builders. In short, according to a calculation of the Duke's 

 agents, an acre of larch would eventually produce consider- 

 ably above £1000. We have, I believe, about thirty millions 

 of unprofitable and uncultivated land iii this kingdom, and 

 if even half of them had been planted a century ago, we 

 should have been independent of all foreign supply, and 

 the national debt would almost have been annihilated. I 

 cannot omit to mention the Welbeck Oak, known by the 

 name of the Duke's Walking Stick, now blown down, and the 

 Passenger Oak, 19 feet in circumference, recalling to the 

 mind Virgil's description of a similar object, — 



Quae quantum vertice ad auras 

 iEthereas tan turn, radice in Tartara tendit. 



The duration of the British oak is almost incredible. I 

 took out of Ethelbert's Gateway, at Eeculvers, in Kent, — now 

 all but tumbling down, — a piece of oak that had been walled 



