UJefulnefs of wafting • the Stems of Trees . 45^ 
yet I have an Oak now, two hundred years old* (1780) which 
is fixteen feet and five inches in circumference, or one hundred 
and ninety-feven inches in two hundred years. But this Oak 
cannot properly be called old. The annual increafe of very 
old trees is hardly meafurable with a firing, as the flighteft 
change of the air. will affeft the firing more, than a year’s 
growth. The large ft trees- that I have meafured are fo far from 
me, that, I have had no opportunity of meafuring them a fe- 
cond time,, except the Oak near the honourable Mr. legge’s 
L odge in Holt Foreft,. which does not (how to be. hollow. In 
175.9 I found' it was at feven feet (for a large fwelling rendered 
it unfair to meafure at five or fix feet) a. trifle above thirty-four 
feet in circumference, and in 1778 I found it had not increafed* 
above half an inch fin nineteen years* This more entire remain > 
of longevity merits fome regard from the lovers of trees,, as 
well as the hollow Oak at Cowthorp in Yorklhire, which Dr.; 
hu n t E jt gives an account of imhis edition of; Evelyn’s Sflya, 
and calls it forty-eight feet round at three feet. Ididnotnaea- 
fur.e it lb low ; ; but in 176811 found it at. four feet, forty feet 
and fix. inches and at five feet, thirty- fix feet and fix inches ; . 
and at fix. feet, thirty-two feet and. one inch. Now, although 
this Oak is larger near the earth than. that in Hampshire, yet it 
diminilhes much more fuddenly in ,girt, viz. eight feet and five 
inches in two feet of. height (I reckon by. my owmmeafures as 
I: took pains to be exaft), Suppofe the diminution continues 
about this rate (for I did not meafure fo high) then at feven feet it 
will be about twenty-eight feet fin circumference, and the bottom 
ru .-.aadt 
* I cannot miftake in the age of this. Oak, as I have the deed between my 
a nee ftor Robert marsham and the Copyhold Tenants of, his Manor of Stratton, 
dated May 20, 1580, upon his then inclosing fome of his wafle; and the abuttal 
i8>clear. 
7 fourteen 
