CHAPTER OF VARIETIES. 



281 



written near him., and he was left to himself. In March, 1833, I took 

 it down and put it in water, when it was found to be alive. 



It is very singular, but I found it had none of that fluid that so 

 resembles saliva, although its shell was broken three or four times, 

 which, had it not been previously torpid, it would have put forth in 

 large effusions. — B. B. Corney. 



The Wormegay oak. — This celebrated oak, denominated the Great 

 Oak, which grew in Wormegay Park, in Norfolk, has not, that I am 

 aware of, been noticed by any writer ; and, having long attracted visiters 

 from all parts of the county, to gaze upon its gigantic form, is now a 

 shattered veteran, dry, prostrate, dead : — 



Thou hast outlived 



Thy popularity, and art become 

 (Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing 

 Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth. 



The history of celebrated trees is generally involved in obscurity, 

 because no particular attention is excited towards them until age or 

 size, decline or decay, renders them objects of curiosity. Such is the 

 case with the Wormegay Oak. All the information respecting it that 

 «an be obtained from the peasantry is, that during fifty years previous 

 to its downfall, it had been propped with oak spars, that the oldest 

 inhabitant in the village does not remember the slightest show of vege- 

 tation on it, and that about fifty years ago its hollow trunk was con- 

 verted into a stowage for calves. I visited the tree in 1832, when so 

 much of it was standing, that I was enabled to ascertain its circum- 

 ference. Near the ground, where there were no projecting spurs, its 

 circumference was fifty-one feet ; its height twenty feet. At this point, 

 short stumps of branches were visible, but not a vestige of bark was 

 left on its bleached surface. 



M. Bosc is of opinion, that an oak of a century's growth does not 

 measure more than a foot in diameter. The growth of the oak must 

 depend upon soil and situation ; and I think it probable, with great 

 respect to the opinion quoted, that the diameter of an oak of a century's 

 growth, under favourable circumstances, would measure double that 

 stated as the opinion of M. Bosc. If an oak were to increase only a 

 foot in diameter each century of its growth, the Wormegay Oak, whose 

 diameter was eight feet, had maintained vigorous growth eight cen- 

 turies. If the maximum of growth be taken at one foot each century, 

 during three centuries, the tree in question had never attained the 



VOL, I. NO. VI. (JUNE, 1833.) u 



