14 
WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES. 
of any other tree, and are the most familiar objects in the 
landscape in most parts of our islands. To my mind, no 
wood is so awe-inspiring as one filled with old oaks, all so 
much alike, yet each with a distinct individuality. We regard 
with reverence a human centenarian, who may have nothing 
beyond his great age to commend him to us ; but we think of 
the long period of history of which he has been a spectator, 
possibly an active maker of history. The huge Oak has 
probably lived through ten or twenty such periods. Compared 
with the Oak, man is but of mushroom growth. It does not 
produce an acorn until sixty or seventy years old, and even 
then it is not mature. Not till a centur>' and a half have 
passed over its head is its timber fit for use, and as a rule 
it is not felled under the age of two hundred years. Many 
trees are left to a much greater age, or we should not have 
still with us so many venerable specimens, and where they 
have not been left until partially decayed, the timber is found 
to be still very valuable when finally cut down. Of one of 
these patriarchs of the forest, cut down in the year i8io, 
we have figures of quantity and value from a contemporary 
record. It was known ■ as the Gelenos Oak, and stood 
about four miles from Newport, Monmouthshire. When felled, 
it yielded 2426 cubic feet of sound timber, and six tons of bark. 
It was bought just as it stood for ;^4o5, and the purchaser 
had to pay ^82 for labour for stripping, felling, and converting 
into timber. Five men were employed for twenty days in 
stripping the bark and felling the tree, and after that a pair 
of sawyers, working six days a week, were five months 
cutting it up. But the bark realized £ 200 , and the timber 
about ^400. The timber and bark from this one tree were 
about equal to the average produce of three acres of oak 
coppice after fifteen years’ growth. 
Full-grown oaks vary in height from sixty to one hundred 
and thirty feet, the difference depending upon situation ; the 
