CHAP. CV.

C0RYLA'CE.E. QUE'RCUS.

1757

are found in different parts of it. Crockern Tor, which we have mentionedabove, is one of the most remarkable of them, and is thus described by Car-rington :—

——— “ Not always thusHave hover’d, Crockern, o’er thy leafless scalpThe silence and the solitude which nowOppresses the crush’d spirits; for I standWhere once the fathers of the forest held(An iron race) the parliament that gaveThe forest law. Ye legislators, nursedIn laps of modern luxury, revereThe venerable spot, where simply clad,

And breathing mountain breezes, sternly sateThe hardy mountain council.”

Near this spot, tradition says, were anciently some old oaks, under whichthe Britons held their courts of judicature previously to the invasion of theRomans; and under which the conference between the Saxons and the Britonstook place, after which the latter gave up the kingdom, and retired intoWales. The oak trees, though the place is still called Wistman’s, or Welch-man’s, Wood, have long since been cut down, though there are still somehuge gnarled stumps amidst loose rocks of granite; and on their decayed tops,thorns, brambles, &c., are shooting forth, forming altogether a most grotesqueappearance. (See Mart. Mill., art. Woods.) These distorted and stuntedremains, we are informed by Mr. Borrer, are all Q. pedunculata; and someidea may be formed of their appearance from the engraving given of them byBurt, in his notes to the second edition of Carrington’s Dartmoor. The treesin this wood are now none of them above 7 ft. high, though their trunks aremore than 10 ft. in circumference. For the following account of this remark-able wood we are indebted to W. Borrer, Esq.:—“ Wistman’s Wood is stillin existence. It is something more than a mile north of Two-Bridges, nearthe centre of Dartmoor, where it forms a narrow stripe, a quarter of a mile atleast in length, along the western slope of a hill, at the foot of which runs amountain brook, one of the branches of the West Dart. On the ridge ofthe hill are the Little Bee and the two Longaford Tors (the Great Longafordbeing a building-place of the raven); and the Crockern Tor, interesting toantiquaries, is on a lower part a little to the south-east. A few of the treesare scattered; but by far the greater part are packed, as it were, among thelow blocks of granite that lie in abundance on the hill side; the gnarled andtwisted stems reclining in the spaces between the rocks, and formed into anundistinguishable mass with them by a thick mat of mosses and lichens, ofwhich the Anomodon curtipendulum, bearing its very rare capsules in profu-sion, contributes a large proportion. I did not observe stems of any largesize, but they display incontestable marks of great antiquity. The branchesrise a very few feet above the rocks, andtheir twigs are very short, yet I found onthem a tolerably vigorous crop of leavesand acorns.” ( IV. ft.) Meavy’s Oak (fig.

1591.) is also on Dartmoor. Our en-graving is taken from a drawing (kindlylent to us by W. Borrer, Esq.) which wasmade in 1833. The tree (which is stag-headed) is about 50 ft. high; the trunk,which is 27 ft. in circumference, ishollow, and it has held nine personsat one time. This oak is supposedto have existed in the time of KingJohn. The Flitton Oak (fig. 1592.) stands singly on a spot where threeroads meet, on an estate belonging to the Earl of Morley, in the parishof North Molton. It is supposed to be 1000 years old; and, within thememory of man, it was nearly twice its present height, which is now about45 ft. It is 33 ft. in circumference at about l ft. from the ground; and atabout 7 ft. it divides into eight enormous limbs. The species is Q. sessiliflora.