306 
DECIDUOUS TREES. 
small trunk (about five feet in diameter) for so great a ramification 
of branches, which cover a space upwards of ninety feet in breadth; 
but there is a majestic solidity in the first divergence of the great 
branches which promises in time to make this an oak of the first 
magnitude, though it is too rotund to be one of great picturesque¬ 
ness. Its height is about eighty feet. There are some superb 
specimens in a pasture field near the grounds of Robert Buist, Esq., 
south of Philadelphia, which measure nearly one hundred feet 
across the spread of their branches, with trunks about fifteen feet 
in circumference, exhibiting all the grand characteristics of full 
grown oaks. Yet these dimensions are not great compared with 
those of living British and German oaks, some of which range from 
forty to sixty feet in circumference of trunk; others from one 
hundred and twenty to one hundred and eighty feet across the 
greatest extension of their branches, and from ninety to one hun¬ 
dred and forty feet in height! One shades an area large enough 
for two thousand four hundred men to stand in comfortably, and 
another drips over an area of three thousand square yards, “ and 
would have afforded shelter to a regiment of nearly one thousand 
horse! ” The trunk of the Cowthorpe oak, which is said to have 
been the prototype of the Eddystone light-house, exceeds in size, 
where it meets the earth, the base of that wonderful structure. 
Many halls in England, of considerable size, are floored with single 
plank from trees grown on the estates where used. Even as 
timber trees, our greatest forest-grown oaks are not equal to their 
venerable European relatives. The author has had a 
forest oak cut from which ten cords of wood were cut, 
which is about two-thirds the cubic contents of the largest 
British trees. This is not an unusual size in our forests ; 
but, alas, very unusual in trees that are rooted, and low- 
spreading enough to resist the gales on open ground. 
Probably the best exemplars of the oak family in our 
country are the live oaks of the Gulf States; some of 
which have been preserved, and rival in the horizontal 
extension of their branches, the greatest oaks of 
England. 
The accompanying cut, Fig. 92, shows the form of 
Fig. 92. 
