woodcutter, to save the seedlings beneath from damage, lops off the crown of the tree with an axe at a point below the first branch before felling the trunk.
The oaks in the German forest of Spessart have been so frequently mentioned by recent writers on Forestry that I need not say anything of them, but doubt whether they equal the oaks in some of the few remaining virgin forests of Slavonia. In 1900 I saw a splendid lot of clean straight logs 3 to 5 feet in diameter, which had been felled in these forests, and floated down the Save to Bosnabrod.
We are indebted to Dr. Simonyi Semadam Sandor, a member of the Hungarian Parliament, for an account of the oaks of Slavonia in the Forest of Brod Petevarad, which is published in a Hungarian journal called Erdzesti Lapok, at Buda Pesth, June 1889, with photographs showing splendid clean-stemmed trees, 30 to 40 metres high, and 2 to 3 metres in diameter.
The European oak seems able to grow well in temperate parts of the southern hemisphere. In Chile it seems as much at home as in Europe, and not only grows much faster, but reproduces itself with such ease from seed on land capable of being irrigated that I saw no reason why it should not be cultivated for its timber.[1]
In South Africa the original Dutch settlers planted oaks near Cape Town, and under one of these trees the Convention was signed by which the Colony was transferred to Great Britain in 1814. On 5th April 1905 my brother posted me a few acorns from this tree, the trunk of which is now hollow and bricked up. I sowed them in May to see whether they would at once revert to their proper season of growth; and out of twenty acorns, three germinated in June, and are now nice young trees, the others never coming up at all.
In North America I have seen no European oaks of any great size, though there is one in Prof. Sargent's grounds near Boston, which has puzzled several good botanists as to its origin.
Injuries to Oaks
The liability of the oak to be struck by lightning was noted by Shakespeare, who, in King Lear, Act III. Scene ii., wrote—
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts.
Mr. Menzies says,[2] "Of all forest trees oaks are, In my experience, the most dangerous. If they have a large spreading head, they are shivered into shreds when struck. If they have long tapering stems, and thus can act almost as conductors, they are not so dangerous, and the lightning will run down the side, ploughing out a deep furrow. I have once seen a beech struck, an ash once, an elm once, a cedar of Lebanon once, but never any other trees, except the oak. And while the others stood comparatively singly in an open space, the oaks have been selected and struck in the midst of a thick wood."
