years. But, after arriving at a certain age, its bulk rapidly increases: thus, the trunk of an oak, belonging to Lord Powis, and growing in Bromfield wood, near Ludlow, in Shropshire, measured in 1764, sixty-eight feet in girth, and twenty-three feet in length; containing in the whole 1455 feet of timber, round measure, or twenty-nine loads and five feet, each load consisting of 50 feet. And Dr. Darwin mentions the Swilcar Oak, a very large tree growing in Needwood forest, which measures thirteen yards in circumference at its base, eleven yards round, at the height of four feet from the earth, and which is believed to be six hundred years old.
The oak is one of the most valuable and majestic trees: its leaves are eaten by horses, cows, goats, and sheep;—deer and swine fatten on the acorns. Its bark, when stripped off, is usefully employed for tanning leather, and afterwards for hot-beds and fuel. It should not, however, exceed the age of 40 or 50 years, as after that time it becomes corky, and does not answer the purpose of the tanner.
Oak-timber is well adapted to almost every purpose of rural and domestic economy, particularly for staves, laths, and spokes of wheels. Being hard, tough, tolerably flexible, and not very liable to splinter, it is generaliy preferred to all other timber for building ships of war; especially if the tree be suffered to stand for three or four years after it has been barked; because it thus becomes perfedly dry, and the inspissated sap renders it much stronger than the heart of any other oak-tree, which has not been stripped; so that the timber acquires greater strength, weight, hardness, and durability.
As this tree is of such eminent utility in naval architecture, and cannot be bent without great difficulty, Mr. Randall, of Maidstone, in Kent, proposed, in 1795, to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. a method of training oaks to compass-shapes, for the purpose of ship-building. His plan consists in reversing the practice usually followed, in order to obtain strait-stemmed trees; by taking off, every year, in the months of March and June, all the lateral shoots closely to the stem, commencing when the tree is about eight feet high, and continuing the operation every year, till it has attained the height of 20 feet. In consequence of this management, the oak grows somewhat crooked, and the curvature will increase as the tree advances in years.
This part of his plan, Mr. Randall considers to be particularly applicable to parks, hedge-rows, or open plantations. The other part of his suggestion relates to forests, in which the underwood is regularly cut every fifteenth or twentieth year, and where many clean and thriving young oaks are often discovered. If two of these grow so near as to reach each other by inflexion, he proposes to bend down their heads, by means of a hooked stick, and to join them together, by interweaving their respective branches; in consequence of which, the trees will assume a direction that will greatly facilitate the future labour of the ship-builder. The proper time for performing these operations is from the age of eight to fourteen years, if the oaks grow freely; and the most convenient season for interweaving the branches, is in the spring, before the leaf appears.—
