THE 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
THE BRITISH OAK. 
BY PROFESSOR JAMES BUCKMAN, F.L.S. F.G.S. F.S.A. ETC. 
W HILST the discussion is still pending, of iron against 
wooden bulwarks, if only for the love we feel towards 
the “ brave old oak,” a few notes upon the forms of this truly 
national tree can hardly fail to be acceptable. At starting, 
however, we must bear in mind, that though we have ever 
looked upon the oak as so thoroughly British that we had 
almost been brought to think that it was made for the sole 
glory of our land, yet there are those who would wish to cast 
a doubt upon its true aboriginal nature, and who, according to 
their custom, represent everything great as borrowed from the 
Continent. What says, however, that pleasant discourser on 
forest trees, Jacob George Strutt, of imperishable sylvan fame: 
— “ In proportion as the oak is valued above all other trees, 
so is the English oak esteemed above that of any other country, 
for its particular characteristics of hardness and toughness; 
qualities which so peculiarly fit it to be the ‘ father of ships/ 
and which are so admirably expressed in two epithets by that 
great poet, to whom the book of nature, and of the human heart, 
seemed alike laid open : — 
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulph’rous bolt, 
Splitt’st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, 
Than the soft myrtle.” — S hakespeare. 
Selby again, in his “ History of Forest Trees,” a work which 
should be in the hands of all lovers of the beautiful natural 
objects of which it treats, describes the finding of some bog 
oaks, which would almost connect the present race with a 
fossilized past : — 
At the Linden, the seat of C. W. Bigge, Esq., the trunk of a magnificent 
oak was extracted from a peat moss that fills a small basin or hollow, 
VOL, II. — NO. V. B 
