CHAP. CV.

CORYLACEjE. QUE'RCUS.

1917

Poetical Allusions. There are very few. Lord Byron speaks of

** The cork trees hoar that crown the shaggy steep,”

in his Childe Harold; and Southey describes their appearance in the gleam ofa traveller’s fire, in his Roderick, the Last of the Goths: —

Bright rose the flame replenish’d: it illumedThe cork tree’s furrow’d rind, its rifts and swells,

And redder scars, and, where its aged boughsO’erbower’d the travellers, cast upon the leavesA floating, grey, unrealising gloom.”

Statistics. In the environs of London, at Ham House, Essex, the cork tree is 27 ft. high, thediameter of the trunk 1 ft. 10 in., and of the head 23 ft. j at Kenwood, Hampstead, 60 years planted,it is 35 ft. high, the diameter of the trunk 2 ft., and of the head 40 ft.; at Fulham Palace, 150 yearsold, it is 40 ft. high, the diameter of the trunk 3 ft. 6 in., and of the head 24 ft.; in the Mile End

Nursery, it is 28 ft high, the circumference of the trunk 4 ft. 4 in_South of London. In Devonshire,

at Killerton, 34 years planted, it is 57 ft. high, the diameter of the trunk 2 ft., and of the head 41 ft.;at Brochill, 45 ft. high, the diameter of the trunk 3ft, and of the head 45 ft. Jn Somersetshire,at Nettlecombe, 60 years planted, it is 30 ft. high, the diameter of the trunk 1 ft. 10 in., and thatof the head 28 ft. In Suffolk, at Campsey Ash, it was 26 ft. high, with a trunk 2 ft. 3 in. indiameter. This tree, we are informed, is since dead. In Surrey, at Farnham Castle, 50 yearsplanted, it is 30 ft. high ; at Claremont, it is 40ft. high, the diameter of the trunk3ft. 6in., andthat of the head 50 ft.—North of London. In Cheshire, at Eaton Hall, 8 years planted, it is 10 ft. high.In Denbighshire, at Llanbede Hall, 15 years planted, it is 22 ft. high. In Pembrokeshire, at Stack-pole Court, 100 years old, it is 40 ft. high, the diameter of the trunk 2 ft., and of the head 40 ft. InSuffolk, at Finborough Hall, 16 years planted, it is 12 ft. high; the diameter of the trunk 8 in., andof the head 10 ft. In Warwickshire, at Coombe Abbey, 60 years planted, it is 64 ft. high, thediameter of the trunk 2 ft. 8 in., and of the head 20 ft. In Worcestershire, at Croome, 40 yearsplanted, it is 35 ft. high, the diameter of the trunk 10in., and of the head 15 ft.—In Ireland, in theGlasnevin Botanic Garden, 30 years planted, it is 15 ft. high, the diameter of the trunk 10 in., and ofthe head 12 ft.; at Cypress Grove, it is 45 ft. high, the diameter of the trunk 1 ft. 6 in., and of thehead 27 ft.; at Castletown, it is 28 ft. high, the diameter of the trunk 2 ft. 8 in., and of the head 24 ft.—In Switzerland, at the seat of M. Gaussen, Bourdigny, near Geneva, it is 3 ft 4 in. in circumference.—In Italy, in Lombardy, at Monza, 14 years planted, it is 12 ft high, the circumference of the trunk1 ft., and the diameter of the head 10ft,

1 35. Q. Pseu'do-iS’u'ber Desf. The False-Cork Oak.

Identification. Desf. Atlan., 2. p. 348.; Spreng. Antiq. Bot,, p. 16. t. 1.; N. Du Ham., 7. p. 174.;Wiild., No. 60.; Smith in Rees’s Cycl., No. 67.

Stmonymes. Chene faux Li£ge, Chene de Gibraltar, Fr.; Unachte Kork-Eiche, Ger. Bose statesthat he possesses a leaf of Q. Ttfrnerf, which was brought to him from Kew by L’Heritier, andthat it is identical with Q. Pseffdo-Siiber; but the leaves of Q. Turners are not in the slightestdegree hoary or glaucous beneath, nor has it a corky bark.

Engravings. Sant. Viagg., t. 4.; Spreng. Antiq. Bot., 1.1. j N. Du Ham., 7. t. 48. f. 2.: and’ourJiff- 1801-

Spec. Char., §c. Leaves ovate-oblong or lanceolate, sinuated, dentated orserrated ; hoary beneath. Bark fungous, cracked. Nut ovate. Calyx mu-ricated, with lax, recurved, linear scales. ( Desf ) Native of the mountainsof Tuscany, Spain, and Barbary. Desfontaines ga-thered it on Mount Atlas, and the Abbe Durand, nearTangier. A tree, 50ft. or 60ft. high; the bark ofwhich is corky, though less so than that of Q. Nuber.

Young branches downy or hoary; sometimes smooth,striated. Desfontaines describes the bark as fungousas very thick, and as being, without doubt, capable ofreplacing the cork of Europe. The leaves are oval-oblong, dentated or serrated; smooth above, and pu-bescent beneath. He adds that the leaves do notdrop during winter; while in the Nouveau Hu Hamel, in Bose, and underthe article <2. Pseudo-Niiber in Rees’s Cyclopaedia, they are described asdeciduous. Bose, indeed, states that the leaves remain green a part ofthe winter; so that the tree may be considered as forming the connect-ing link between the evergreen oaks and the deciduous ones. A tree ofQ. Pseudo-Nuber was planted in the garden of M. Lemonnier, near Ver-sailles, by M. A. Richard, in 1754, which is stated to have proved quitehardy, and of vigorous growth, though, in 1820, it had not produced fruit.We have not been able to get any account of the present state of this tree;but we can easily conceive that it may be evergreen on the shores of theMediterranean, and only subevergreen in the neighbourhood of Paris orLondon. The specimens of this tree in the Horticultural Society’s Darden(lately, 1837, dead), and at Messrs. Loddiges’s, have always appeared to us