139 
will certainly soon demand) i hope in your description of the Holt 
Forest, you will pay a compliment justly due, to the Oak by Ld 
Stawel’s Lodge : as i suppose it the largest in this Island. I 
went from London on purpose to see it in 1759, and again occa- 
sionally in 1778. ’Tis at 7 feet full 34 feet in cireumf. & had not 
gained half an inch in 19 years, yet i could not see it was hollow. 
If i measure right, i make 14 feet length of the Holt Oak, to 
contain above 1000 feet, viz above 320 feet more than the Cow- 
thorp Oak, which I) r Hunter in his Edition of Evelyn’s Silva, 8 calls 
the largest in England. I early begun planting, & an Oake 9 which 
i planted in 1720, is at one foot from the earth 12 feet. G. inches. 0 
round; & at 14 feet (the half of the timber length) is 8.2.0. So 
measuring the bark as timber, gives 11GF. £ buyers measure. 
Perhaps you never heard of a larger Oak & the planter living. I 
Hatter myself, that i increased the growth by washing, the stem, & 
digging a circle as far as i supposed the roots to extend, & spreading 
saw-dust &c, as related in the Phil. Trans. 10 — I wish i had begun 
planting with Leeches (my favourite Trees as well as yours) & i 
might have seen large trees of my own raising. But i did not begin 
Beeches ’till 1741, & then by seed ; & my largest is now, at 5 feet, 
6.3.0 round, & spreads a circle of + * 20 yards diaui r - But this has 
been digged round & washed, &c. The last Winter was so very 
mild with us, that the leaves of many of my very young Oaks 
preserved their green into April, & a large Hawthorn (headed the 
proceeding year) has its old leaves now : which i never observed 
before, in any deciduous trees : tho’ I once had a second leafing of 
a Hawthorn about Xmass. But those leaves faded before Spring, 
I sent the account to S r J. Pringle when P.R.S. 11 but he thought it 
8 ‘Silva: or, a Discourse of Forest-trees, &c. By John Evelyn. With 
notes by A. Hunter.’ New Ed., 2 vols. 4to, York : 1786. vol. ii. p. 197. The 
Cowthorpe Oak grew on an estate belonging to Lady Stourton, and an 
engraving of it is given by Hunter, who introduces his notice of it by a 
reference to “ My ingenious friend Mr. Marsham.” — A.N. 
* This oak will be found noticed in the “ Observations on V egetables,” where 
an extract, very incorrectly printed, from the present letter is quoted — J .E.H. 
10 Vol. lxvii. p. 12.— A.N. 
" Sir John Pringle, President of the Royal Society, 1772— 1778.— A.N. 
* This was Marsham’s usual mode of expressing ‘‘more than” see Trans. 
Vol ii., p. 39— T.S. 
