a genus of plants, belonging to the monoecia clas; and in the natural method ranking under the 50th order, Amentaceae. See Botany Index.

The robur, or common English oak, grows from about 60 or 70 to 100 feet high, with a prodigious large trunk, and monstrous spreading head; oblong leaves, broadest towards the top, the edges acutely finuated, having the angles obtuse. There is a variety, having the leaves finely striped with white. This species grows in great abundance all over England, in woods, forests, and hedge-rows; is naturally of an amazing large growth, there being accounts of some above 100 feet stature, with wonderful large trunks and spreading heads; and is supposed to continue its growth many centuries.

The fiber, or cork-tree, grows 30 or 40 feet high, having a thick, rough, fungous, cleft bark, and oblong-oval undivided ferrated leaves, downy underneath. This species furnishes that useful material cork; it being the bark of the tree, which becoming of a thick fungous nature, under which, at the same time, is formed a new bark, and the old being detached for use, the tree still lives, and the succeeding young bark becomes also of the same thick spongy nature in six or seven years, fit for barking, having likewise another fresh bark forming under it, becoming cork like the others in the like period of time; and in this manner these trees wonderfully furnish the cork for our use, and of which is made the corks for bottles, bungs for barrels, and numerous other useful articles. The tree grows in great plenty in Spain and Portugal, and from these countries we receive the cork. The Spaniards burn it, to make that kind of light black we call Spanish black, used by painters. Cups made of cork are said to be good for hectic persons to drink out of. The Egyptians made coffins of cork; which being lined with a resinous composition, preserved dead bodies uncorrupted. The Spaniards line stone-walls with it, which not only renders them very warm, but corrects the moisture of the air.

Oak-trees, of all the above sorts, may be employed in gardening to diversify large ornamental plantations in out-grounds, and in forming clumps in spacious lawns, parks, and other extensive opens; the evergreen kinds in particular have great merit for all ornamental purposes in gardens. But all the larger growing kinds, both deciduous and evergreens, demand esteem principally as first-rate forest-trees for their timber. The English oak, however, claims precedence as a timber-tree, for its prodigious height and bulk, and superior worth of its wood. Every possessor of considerable estates ought therefore to be particularly attentive in raising woods of them, which is effected by sowing the acorns—either in a nursery and the plants transplanted where they are to remain, or sowed at once in the places where they are always to stand. All the sorts will prosper in any middling soil and open situation, though in a loamy soil they are generally more prosperous: however, there are but few soils in which oaks will not grow; they will even thrive tolerably in gravelly, sandy, and clayey land, as may be observed in many parts of this country of the common oak.

The oak is of the utmost importance to Britain, and its cultivation deserves the utmost attention. Much, therefore, to the honour of the members of the London Society for encouraging Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, they have excited particular attention to it; and many excellent observations, drawn from practice, will be found in their Transactions.

The propagation of the striped-leaved varieties of the common oak, and any particular variety of the other species, must be effected by grafting, as they will not continue the same from seed: the grafting may be performed upon any kind of oakling-stocks raised from the acorns, and train them for standards like the others.

The oak is remarkable for its slowness of growth, bulk, and longevity. It has been remarked that the trunk has attained to the size only of 14 inches in diameter, and of some to 20, in the space of four score years. As to bulk, we have an account of an oak belonging to Lord Powis, growing in Broomfield wood, near Ludlow in Shropshire, in the year 1764, the trunk of which measured 68 feet in girth, 23 in length, and which, reckoning 90 feet for the larger branches, contained in the whole 1455 feet of timber, round measure, or 29 loads and five feet, at 50 feet to a load.

The Greendale oak, &c., we have already mentioned (see OAK). In the opinion of many, the Cowthorpe oak, near Wetherby in Yorkshire is the father of the forest. Dr Hunter, in his edition of Evelyn, has given an engraving of it. Within three feet of the surface he says it measures 16 yards, and close to the ground 26. In 1776, though in a ruined condition, it was 85 feet high, and its principal limb extended 16 yards from the bole. The foliage was very thin. If this measurement were taken as the dimension of the real stem, the size of this tree would be enormous; but, like most very large trees, its stem is short, spreading wide at the base, the roots rising above the ground like buttresses to the trunk, which is similar not to a cylinder but to the frustum of a cone. Mr Marsham says, "I found it in 1768, at four feet, 40 feet six inches; at five feet, 36 feet six inches; and at six feet, 32 feet one inch." In the principal dimensions then, the size of the stem, it is exceeded by the Bentley oak; of which the same writer gives the following account: "In 1759 the oak in Holt-Forest, near Bentley, was at seven feet 34 feet. There is a large excrecence at five and six feet that would render the measure unfair. In 1778, this tree was increased half an inch in 19 years. It does not appear to be hollow, but by the trifling increase I conclude it not found." These dimensions, however, are exceeded by those of the Boddington oak. It grows in a piece of rich grass land, called the Old Orchard Ground, belonging to Boddington-Manor Farm, lying near the turnpike-road between Cheltenham and Tewkesbury, in the Vale of Gloucester. The stem is remarkably collected at the root, the sides of its trunk being much more upright than those of large trees in general; and yet its circumference at the ground is about 20 paces: measuring with a two-foot rule, it is more than 18 yards. At three feet high it is 43 feet, and where smallest, i.e. from five to six feet high, it is 36 feet. At six feet it swells out larger, and forms an enormous head, which has been furnished with huge, and probably extensive, arms. But time and the fury of the wind have robbed it of much of its grandeur; and the greatest extent of arm in 1793 was eight yards from the stem.

In the Gentleman's Magazine for May 1794 we have an account of an oak tree growing in Penshurst park in Kent, together with an engraving. It is called the Bear or Bore oak, from being supposed to resemble that which Camden thought gave name to the county of Berkshire. The tradition at Penshurst is that it is the very tree planted on the day that the celebrated Sir Philip Sydney was born. "Some late writers (says Mr. Mr Rawlet) have questioned this, and think that to have been a different tree, which was cut down some years ago, and was indeed much larger than this. I remember being once in the hollow of the present oak with the late Sir John Cullum; and his opinion then was, that its antiquity was greater than the period assigned. But, I assure you, the tradition of this place is constant for this tree; and, in confirmation of it, an old lady of 94 years of age, now living, has told me, that all the tenants used to furnish themselves with boughs from this tree, to stick in their hats, whenever they went to meet the earls of Leicester, as was always the custom to do at the end of the park when they came to reside at their seat here. This fine old oak stands upon a plain about 500 yards from their venerable mansion, near a large piece of water called Lancelot-well. Ben Jonson and Waller have particularly noticed it; and from the distinguished owners of this place, it may be truly said to stand on classic ground. Within the hollow of it there is a seat, and it is capable of containing five or six persons with ease. The bark round the entrance was so much grown up, that it has lately been cut away to facilitate the access. The dimensions of the tree are these:

| Girth close to the ground | Feet. Inches | |--------------------------|-------------| | Ditto one foot from ditto | 35 6 | | Ditto five feet from ditto | 27 6 | | Height taken by shadow | 24 0 | | Girth of lowest, but not largest, limb | 73 0 |

With respect to longevity, Linnæus gives account of an oak 260 years old: but we have had traditions of some in England (how far to be depended upon we know not) that have attained to more than double that age. Mr Marsham, in a letter to Thomas Beever, Esq., Bath Papers, vol. i. p. 79, makes some very ingenious calculations on the age of trees, and concludes from the increase of the Bentley oak, &c. that the Fortworth chestnut is 1100 years old.

Besides the grand purposes to which the timber is applied in navigation and architecture, and the bark in tanning of leather, there are other uses of less consequence, to which the different parts of this tree have been referred. The Highlanders use the bark to dye their yarn of a brown colour, or, mixed with copperas, of a black colour. They call the oak the king of all the trees in the forest; and the herdsman would think himself and his flock unfortunate if he had not a staff of it. The acorns are a good food to fatten swine and turkeys; and, after the severe winter of the year 1729, the poor people in France were miserably constrained to eat them themselves. There are, however, acorns produced from another species of oak, which are eaten to this day in Spain and Greece, with as much pleasure as chestnuts, without the dreadful compulsion of hunger.

**Quercus Marina**, the Sea Oak, in Botany, the name of a broad-leaved dichotomous sea-fucus. It is not agreed, among the late botanists, what was the sea-oak of Theophrastus; and the most ancient botanists, Clusius and Caesalpinus, suppose it to have been a species of the shrubby coralline; but that seems by no means to have been the case, since Theophrastus says his sea-oak had a long, thick, and fleshy leaf; whence we may much more naturally conclude it to have been of the fucus clas.