ments given on the trunk of the tree are—height 36 metres=118 feet; girth at 1.30 metres, 5.20 metres=17 feet; volume 32 cubic metres=1130 feet; value £100. Mr. George Marshall, Past-President of the English Arboricultural Society, who is a timber valuer of great experience, estimated the butt of the tree to contain (46 feet by 42 inches quarter-girth) 550 cubic feet; plus 150 cubic feet for the top, making a total of 700 cubic feet; which, with the addition of an unknown quantity for the branches, always reckoned in France, plus 20 per cent for the difference between the total volume and the English quarter-girth measurement, will come near the French estimate. A photograph of an oak in the Forét de Belléme was reproduced in this report. Its total height was 1194 feet, and its girth at 4 feet 6 inches was 9 feet 9 inches. It is impossible to imagine a tree containing more useful timber and less waste than this tree, which has rather the appearance of a gigantic mop than of an oak as we know them. Prof. Fisher considers Bellême as the finest oak forest in France, and in the Gardeners' Chronicle, xxviii. 220 (1900), speaks of a sessile oak which he measured there 146 feet high, with a clean bole 113 feet by 9 feet 10 inches girth, and a volume of about 500 cubic feet.[1]
Another renowned forest in France is that of Bercé near Chateau du Loir (Sarthe), visited by Henry in 1903 and in 1906, which covers 13,350 acres; and is made up of about 90 per cent of sessile oak and 10 per cent of beech. It is situated on a plateau; the soil being a deep loamy sand, poor in lime. There is not a single pedunculate oak in the forest itself, yet, curiously enough, all those in the hedgerows of the surrounding country are of this form. The sessile oak, owing to its ability to bear shade, is grown densely in the forest, and attains an astonishing height, though it is slow in growth, as far as regards diameter of stem, which averages at 200 years old only 20 inches. The best individual tree, the Chêne Boppe,[2] in 1905 measured 115 feet high, 75 feet to the first branch, and 14 feet in girth. Another tree, measured in 1906, was 125 feet total height, 92 feet to the first branch, and 8 feet in girth. In one section, containing a little less than twenty acres, there stood in 1903, aged 211 years, 1314 oaks and 268 beeches; the oaks averaging 28 inches in diameter. The total amount of the timber[3] was estimated by an accurate survey in 1895 at 275,000 cubic feet, valued at £14,720, or about ₤740 an acre. The yield of the first and second series in this forest, 2700 acres in extent, over which felling is done in sections once every 216 years, works out at 66 cubic feet of timber per acre per annum, equivalent to a net annual revenue per acre of £2:3s. A photograph taken by Henry, shows the shape of these forest oaks, all beautiful, clean, cylindrical stems, and illustrates the way in which the
- ↑ Henry visited Bellême in 1906, and does not consider it to be quite as fine a forest as Bercé. The best tree seen, possibly the same as the one measured by Prof. Fisher, was 125 feet total height, 95 feet to the first branch, 10 feet 4 inches in girth, and about 425 cubic feet in volume. On referring to Prof. Fisher as to this measurement, he sends me two photographs given him by M. Granger, then Garde Général at Bellême, representing (1) the Chêne de Brigonnais, which is 37 metres = about 120 feet high; girth at 4 feet 6 inches, 3 metres=9 feet 10 inches; height to the first branch, 23 metres; (2) the Chêne Lorentz, which is 40 metres in height=about 130 feet, girth 4½ metres=about 14¾ feet, and 18 metres long to the point where it divides into two nearly equal stems. It therefore appears that we have in England a few oaks at least as tall, and many larger in bulk than any recorded in France.
- ↑ Near this tree Henry observed an oak bearing misletoe on a branch at 60 feet up.
- ↑ Huffel, Economie Forestière, i. pp. 370, 372 (1904). The capital or volume of wood in the forest is not diminished by its felling, but is steadily increasing slightly all the time, owing to careful management.
