Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/748

Rh 690 OAK represented in the Himalayas and the hills of China, exists likewise in the peninsula of Malacca, in Java, and in some other islands of the archipelago, several species occur ring in the Moluccas and Borneo. On the mountains of Europe and North America they grow only at moderate elevations, and none approach the arctic circle. The mul titude of species and the many intermediate forms render their exact limitation difficult, but those presenting suffi ciently marked characters to justify specific rank probably approach 300 in number. The well-known Q. Robur, one of the most valued of the genus, and the most celebrated in history and myth, may be taken as a type of the oaks with sinuated leaves. Though known in England, where it is the only indigenous species, as the British oak, it is a native of most of the milder parts of Europe, extending from the shores of the Atlantic to the Ural ; its most northern limit is attained in Norway, where it is found wild up to lat. 63, and near the Lindesnses forms woods of some extent, the trees occa sionally acquiring a considerable size. In western Kussia it flourishes in lat. 60, but on the slope of the Ural the 56th parallel is about its utmost range. Its northern limit nearly coincides with that of successful wheat cultivation. Southwards it extends to Sardinia, Sicily, and the Morea. In Asia it is found on the Caucasus, but does not pass the Ural ridge into Siberia. In Britain and in most of its Con tinental habitats two varieties exist, regarded by many as distinct species : one, Q. x&amp;gt;edunculata, has the acorns, gen erally two or more together, on long stalks, and the leaves nearly sessile; while in the other, Q. sessiliflora, the fruit is without or with a very short peduncle, and the leaves are furnished with well -developed petioles. But, though the extreme forms of these varieties are very dissimilar, in numerable modifications are found between them ; hence it is more convenient to regard them as at most sub-species of Q, Robur. The British oak is one of the largest trees of the genus, though old specimens are often more remark able for the great size of the trunk and main boughs than for very lofty growth. The spreading branches have a tend ency to assume a tortuous form, owing to the central shoots becoming abortive, and the growth thus being continued laterally, causing a zigzag development, more exaggerated in old trees and those standing in exposed situations ; to this peculiarity the picturesque aspect of ancient oaks is FIG. 2. Q. pedunculate ; half natural size. (From Kotschy, op. cit., plate xxvii.) largely due. When standing in dense woods the trees are rather straight and formal in early growth, especially the sessile-fruited kinds, and the gnarled character tradi tionally assigned to the oak applies chiefly to its advanced age. The broad deeply-sinuated leaves with blunt rounded lobes are of a peculiar yellowish colour when the buds unfold in May, but assume a more decided green towards midsummer, and eventually become rather dark in tint ; they do not change to their brown autumnal hue until late in October, and on brushwood and saplings the withered foliage is often retained until the spring. The catkins appear soon after the young leaves, usually in England towards the end of May ; the acorns, oblong in form, are in shallow cups with short, scarcely projecting scales ; the fruit is shed the first autumn, often before the foliage changes. Vast oak forests still covered the greater part of Eng land and central Europe in the earlier historic period ; and, though they have been gradually cleared in the pro gress of cultivation, oak is yet the prevailing tree in most of the woods of France, Germany, and southern Russia, while in England the coppices and the few fragments of natural forest yet left are mainly composed of this species. The pedunculated variety is most abundant in the southern and midland counties, the sessile -fruited kinds in the northern parts and in Wales, especially in upland districts ; the straighter growth and abundant acorns of this sub species have led to its extensive introduction into planta tions. The name of &quot;durmast&quot; oak, originally given to a dark-fruited variety of Q. sessiliflora in the New Forest, has been adopted by foresters as a general term for this, kind of oak ; it seems to be the most prevalent form in Germany and in the south of Europe. A variety of the sessile oak with sweet acorns appears to be the Q. Esculus of some writers. Many of the ancient oaks that remain in England may date from Saxon times, and some perhaps, from an earlier period ; the growth of trees after the trunk has become hollow is extremely slow, and the age of such venerable giants only matter of vague surmise. The cele brated Newland oak in Gloucestershire, known for cen turies as &quot;the great oak,&quot; was by the latest measurement 47^ feet in girth at 5 feet from the ground. The Cow- thorpe oak, standing (a ruin) near Wetherby in Yorkshire, at the same height measures 38^ feet, and seems to have been of no smaller dimensions when described by Evelyn two centuries ago ; like most of the giant oaks of Britain, it is of the pedunculate variety. The preservation of these old trees has been in past times largely due to the survival of the reverence in which the oak was held by Celt and Saxon, a feeling which seems to have been shared by several Aryan races. The great regard paid to the oak probably originated in the value attached to its timber and fruit ; the largest and most durable of European trees, its. wood was looked upon as the most precious produce of the forest. With both Greek and Roman it was the favourite timber for house, bridge, and ship building ; and the furrowed columns with spreading base that upheld their stone -built temples of historic age seem to indicate the oak-trunk as their archaic prototype. The tree was not in less esteem among the Teutonic nations ; the long ships df the Northmen were hewn from the same &quot; heart of oak &quot; of which the war -ships of England were until lately con structed. The Anglo-Saxons employed oak timber not only for their dwellings and their fleets but occasionally for more sacred architecture, the church till recently standing at Greenstead in Essex, and supposed to have been erected in the 10th century, was wholly formed of oak trunks roughly squared. The few ancient timber mansions still existing in England are generally built entirely of oak, which in many cases remains sound after the lapse of several hundred years, sometimes outlasting the brick and stone with which the structures have been repaired. The great oak woods that in early days covered the larger part of Britain had in Tudor times become so reduced that an Act was passed in the reign of Henry VIII. to enforce their preservation, and by the end of the 16th century oak plant-