was done by Marsh, Cribb, and Company of Leeds, with brown pollard oak, showing very varied figure, and superior in this respect even to that of Dr. Weld's house.
This wood requires no varnish, but when simply polished with wax and shellac only, in the manner adopted by Dr. Weld, is as rich as any mahogany. It is to some extent imitated by a practice called fuming, which is now very commonly used to give a darker colour to foreign oak, and thus make it resemble old oak, which has become so fashionable; but fumed oak can easily be distinguished from, and is far inferior to real brown oak, which also varies a good deal in colour when new.
Pollard Oak
There is another form of oak wood usually called pollard, which is produced from the burrs or swellings which often appear on old oaks, especially in very dry and in wet ground. The real cause of these excrescences is not yet fully explained; but in some places, and especially in Sherwood Forest, they are very common, and when cut, show a twisted and contorted grain, sometimes full of little eyes which resemble those of the so-called "birds'-eye maple," a variety of the wood of American maple, of which we shall speak later.
Pollard oak is usually full of little cracks, and is best cut into thin slices or "plating" 4 inch thick or less. When polished the little cracks are filled up, and when the wood is mottled with brown, yellow, and pink in various shades it is very beautiful. An oak of this type, which was only about 10 feet high and 9 feet in girth, grew on Chedworth Downs, Gloucestershire, and was given to me by the Earl of Eldon. Its wood, when cut into veneer, was throughout the whole thickness of the tree more like that of birds'-eye maple than oak, and has served to make the front of a very handsome bookcase.
Oak Panelling
I cannot pass from this subject without alluding to the use of English oak for panelling walls, a practice which was almost universal in houses built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of which many beautiful examples still exist. Modern architects, however, do not seem to have properly appreciated, that the beauty and fitness of oak for such work depends on the extent to which the "figure," "flower," "silver grain," or "flash" is shown—all these terms are used to express the bright glossy patches and lines which the medullary rays of oak show when cut "on the true quarter."
In our ancestors' time, when roads were bad or non-existent, and when sawmills were unknown, it was necessary to cut up large oak trees where they fell, either by digging a saw pit near or under them, or by cross-cutting them into suitable lengths, and then "rending," cleaving, or splitting them into slabs. This practice is now adopted principally for making oak palings and for wheel spokes, which are much stronger
