AGE OF TREES, 
44 
their leaders when young, and hence are short in the 
but : yet we have records of aspiring timber trees of 
this species of astonishing magnitude, though perhaps 
none of them exceed those mentioned by Evelyn, cut 
down near Newberry in Berkshire, one of which ran 
fifty feet clear without a knot, and cut clean timber five 
feet square at the base ; its consort gave forty feet of 
clear, straight timber, squaring four feet at its base, and 
nearly a yard at the top. The “ lady oak,” mentioned 
by Sir E. Harley, produced a but of forty feet, and 
squared five feet throughout its whole length, thus produc- 
ing twenty tons of timber, a mass of surprising grandeur ! 
But the most magnificent oak ever known to have grown 
in England was probably that dug out of Hatfield bog : 
it was a hundred and twenty five feet in length, twelve in 
diameter at the base, ten in the middle, and six at the 
smaller end, where broken off; so that the but for sixty 
feet squared seven feet of timber, and four its entire 
length. Twenty pounds were offered for this tree.* 
This extraordinary vegetable should have been preserved 
in some museum, as unequalled in ancient, unapproach- 
able in modem days ; exceeding in magnitude even 
that famous larch brought to Rome in the reign of Ti- 
berius, f and reserved as a curiosity for many years, 
which was one hundred and twenty feet long, and two 
feet in diameter its whole length. 
Indigenous, flourishing, and inured to all the caprices 
of our climate as the oak is, yet it produces its fruit 
very precariously, and at times sparingly, like a plant 
of exotic origin ; which does not appear to have been 
the case formerly, when such herds of swine were 
maintained by the produce of our woods alone, and 
grants from manorial lords for permission thus to feed 
them were recorded with care as valuable obtainments. 
The cause of infertility in indigenous trees can arise 
from no defect of construction in the organs of fructi- 
fication, but from some obstruction, perversion, redun- 
dancy, or vitiation of the natural powers ; which is par- 
* Philosoph. Trans, as quoted in the Sylva. 
t Pliny’s Natural History. 
