Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/194

316 grove of limes which I shall describe later, in a position which makes it difficult to photograph. This tree measures about 100 feet high by 23 feet in girth, and has a fine clean bole of 40 feet. It contains, according to Mr. A.C. Forbes's estimate, about 950 feet of timber.

The finest oak I have seen in Devonshire is in the park of the Hon. Mark Rolle at Bicton, a place long celebrated for its arboretum and for its avenue of Araucarias, which I have elsewhere described. It measures about 78 feet high by 24 feet 8 inches girth at 3 feet, and has a spread of branches of 103 feet in diameter. There are some fine but not extraordinary oaks at Powderham Castle and at Poltimore in the same county.

Near Mottisfont Abbey, Hants, there is a very thick but short pollard oak on the banks of the Test, of which a photograph, by Mr. J. Bailey, Southampton, has been kindly sent me by Mrs. Meinertzhagen, who long resided at Mottisfont. It measures 32 feet in girth and spreads considerably, and, though evidently of very great age, is full of healthy foliage. It must have been frequently flooded, as it stands close to the river.

Near Bramley, Hants, by the road leading to "The Vine," is an oak, which Henry measured in 1905, 100 feet by 22 feet, and which seems quite sound. There are, so far as I know, no oaks now living in the New Forest which are remarkable for their size as compared with the trees I have mentioned.

Of the historical parks of England I know none which contains so many fine oaks as Bagot's Park, near Rugeley, Staffordshire. This must be one of the oldest parks in England, for though Lord Bagot cannot tell me the exact date of its enclosure, he states that it belonged to his family long before 1367, and that in the "Peregrinations of Dr. Boarde, temp. Henry VIII.," printed at the end of Hearne's Benedictus Abba, p. 795, "Baggotte's Park" is mentioned in the list of Staffordshire parks. It is generally said to contain 1500 acres within the pale, but varies from time to time, as land has been added in some places and taken out in others for planting, to be again restored when the woods are grown.

This practice seems to be well worthy of more general adoption, for no one who is acquainted with the condition of the trees in many of our oldest parks can have failed to notice, that they are as a rule going back; and as trees cannot be successfully raised to a great height if deer are not excluded—unless enclosures of considerable size are made about once in a generation, in which trees can be properly drawn up to a sufficient height, before they are thinned and the deer admitted—the time must come, and in some cases already has come, when nothing but wrecks are left, and the singly planted trees, though protected by iron or wooden guards at great cost, are a mere mockery of their predecessors.

The soil in Bagot's Park is poor and cold, being a moist gravelly loam upon a clay or marl bottom, and Lord Bagot says it is not worth 10s. per acre at the present time. It affords, however, an excellent proof of the fact that land which is not valuable from an agricultural point of view, may often be of great value for planting. The woods extend over many hundred acres and consist almost wholly of oak, mostly, I believe, of the pedunculate variety. Many of the trees are of great age, being mentioned by Dr. Plot in 1686 as full-grown timber.