Holm oak

“ You know where the holm oak is—of course you don't. Look here. {201} Get back on to the ride and follow that. It leads you to a hollow."
"It leads two ways," said the Fox Cub.
"You go downhill to the hollow," said the Marten, gently. "Right at the bottom you will find an oak-stump, and if you look inside it (which I don't advise) , you will find a family of Polecats."
And perhaps you will be good enough to get higher up the Tree, while I come underneath
"Polecats?" ”

“ Oaks are much rarer and appear to be on the decline. Yet the evidence of the peat-bogs proves that before the advent of the beech the country was overspread with dense forests of tall and stately oaks. It was during the ascendency of the oak in the woods that bronze seems to have become known in Denmark; for swords and shields of that metal, now in the museum of Copenhagen, have been taken out of peat in which oaks abound. Yet at a still earlier period the oak had been preceded by the pine or Scotch fir in the Danish forests ”

“ The hay was still bringing in, for one harvest in Norway treads on the heels of the other. The woods were more variegated, interspersed with shrubs. We no longer passed through forests of vast pines stretching along with savage magnificence. Forests that only exhibited the slow decay of time or the devastation produced by warring elements. No; oaks, ashes, beech, and all the light and graceful tenants of our woods here sported luxuriantly. I had not observed many oaks before, for the greater part of the oak-planks, I am informed, come from the westward. ”

“ In the fertile and less elevated districts of Norway the forest growth, apart from Conifers, includes the ash, elm, lime, oak, beech, and black alder. The aspen, white alder, mountain ash, and bird cherry thrive at a considerable elevation, and are occasionally found even in the birch zone. The oak still grows abundantly on the south-eastern coast, from Jarlsberg-Laurvik amt to Christiansand, but is nowhere found in extensive forests. The only locality in which the beech can be said to thrive is Jarlsberg-Laurvik amt. ”

“ Stumps of large oaks, as well as roots of hazel and sallow, are to be seen at various points on the foreshore, where the overlying alluvium and peat have been cleared away by the sea. But the oak-stumps seem to be rooted on a soil resting directly on solid rock; they do not appear to be underlain by estuarine deposits, or by lower submerged forests. ”

“ It is quite clear that at the opening of the period with which this volume deals, the greater part of England stood fully 70 feet above its present level, for the oldest deposit we deal with is a land-surface covered with oak-forest and lying 60 feet below tide-level. The oaks cannot have flourished lower, but they may have grown on a soil well above sea-level. Perhaps taking the whole of the evidence into account, a subsidence of nearly 90 feet is the most probable measure of the extent of the subsequent movement. ”

“ So far, wherever we have a carefully noted section of the lowest deposits in these valleys, the tin ground or the gravels are directly succeeded by a growth of oak trees. It looks as though the climate ameliorated, the more violent floods ceased, and an oak forest grew across the alluvial flats, without there being any, or much, change of sea-level. ”

“ At the bottom of a glade, by the side of the chalk hill, is a dip or hollow, not deep, but a kind of basin about twice the size of one of my living-rooms. Round this, old beeches, growing close by, have pushed forth their great roots in all directions; on one side of the hollow a gnarled oak stands, not any great height, but of vast bulk, the great limbs reaching far over the open space. In the middle of the hollow, under the roots of this oak, our friar of orders gray has made his home, and a very secure and pleasant one it is. ”

“ The fir, the pine, and the white birch abound, the first growing at an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet above the level of the sea. Now and again the eye is arrested by the gracefully-disposed mountain-ash, heavy with clusters of red berries; and often intermingled with the undergrowth, the pale dog-rose is seen growing far beyond the reach of human hands. In Sweden there are immense forests of firs hundreds of miles in extent, where the aspen and mountain-ash also abound. The oak is rare, but is found well developed in some of the southern districts of both Norway and Sweden. ”

“ The new owner spared it, and later when it became my property I did likewise, for I should have considered it sacrilege to destroy the finest oak in the neighbourhood. Some years after I had sold the farm I heard that the tree was blown down in a gale, its enormous head and widespread branches must have offered immense resistance to the wind, and the fall of it must have been great.
The most celebrated, if not the biggest oak in the New Forest is the Knightwood oak, not far from Lyndhurst; it is 17 feet in circumference, which would make it not less than 450 years old by the above rule. ”

“ THE OAK.
A gentleman once stood before an oak tree pondering deeply. Nine miles from the coast of Cornwall lay some dangerous rocks on which many a brave ship had been wrecked. Twice a lighthouse had been erected upon them, and twice destroyed. On what plan could he build a new one, which should stand firm through storm and tempest? The oak tree stands for hundreds of years; branch after branch may be broken off, but never the oak. ”

“ It supports a great weight of thick limbs, irregular and crooked. Clear up to the knotted twigs, and tough brown leaves that often hang on all winter, the oak has a stubborn look. It dares the winter winds to do their worst. And it looks so old, so wise, such a scarred hero of a thousand fights. The old Norse sea kings and the brave English once worshiped the oak tree. It gave them ship timbers that could stand the strain of wind and waves. Many ancient peoples thought dryads, or wood spirits, lived in oak trees. ”

“ Through these we climb, by a rough stairway, perhaps several hundred feet, to where a spring bursts out from under an overhanging cliff, and where cottonwoods and willows stand, while along the curves of the brooklet oaks grow, and other rich vegetation is seen, in marked contrast to the general appearance of naked rock. We call these Oak Glens. ”

“ Every carpenter in Scotland knows the extraordinary difference between the durability of Highland oak and oak usually imported from England, for the spokes of wheels. Every extensive timber-dealer is aware of the superior hardness of oak raised in Cumberland and Yorkshire, over that of Monmouthshire and Herefordshire; and such a dealer in selecting trees in the same woods, in any district, will always give the preference to oak of slow growth, and found in cold and clayey soils, and to ash on rocky cliffs, which he knows to be the soils and climates natural to both. ”

“ The oak has now in its turn been almost superseded in Denmark by the common beech. Other trees, such as the white birch (Betula alba) , characterise the lower part of the bogs, and disappear from the higher; while others again, like the aspen (Populus tremula) , occur at all levels, and still flourish in Denmark. All the land and freshwater shells, and all the mammalia as well as the plants, whose remains occur buried in the Danish peat, are of Recent species. ”

“ The only pine forests where oaks are not intermixed are either in land so sandy that oaks cannot be made to grow on them at all, or so far north that they are beyond their northern limit. In the Green Mountains and in the New England forests, in the pine forests in Pennsylvania, in the Adirondacks, in Wisconsin and Michigan—except in sand—I have found oaks mixed with the pines and spruces. In northwestern Minnesota and in northern Dakota the oaks are near their northern limit, but even there the burr oak drags on a bare existence among the pines and spruces. ”

“ It occupies the greater part of the broad sandy flats of the upper end of the Valley, and is the species that yields the acorns so highly prized by the Indians and woodpeckers.
The other species is the mountain live-oak, or goldcup oak (Quercus chrysolepis) , a sturdy mountaineer of a tree, growing mostly on the earthquake taluses and benches of the sunny north wall of the Valley. In tough, unwedgeable, knotty strength, it is the oak of oaks, a magnificent tree. ”

“ Now the known fact is that in the time of the Romans, as now, the Danish isles were covered by magnificent beech forests, and that eighteen centuries have done little or nothing toward changing the character of the vegetation. How many centuries must have elapsed to enable the oak to supplant the pine, and the beech to supplant the oak, can only be vaguely conjectured. Yet the evidence is clear that man lived in those old pine forests—leaving his implements of stone behind him, as he did his tools of bronze and iron in the succeeding periods. ”

“ Each new bend presented a fresh picture with the changing waterfalls leaping over by the dozen till we might have thought ourselves in some Norwegian fiord, and we gave far more attention to admiring the scenery than to navigating the boats. Late in the day we landed at the left on the point of a bend and chopped a path through the thick oak brush to a grassy glade, where we soon had the paulins stretched across oars supported by other oars forming comfortable shelters in front of which huge fires of dead oak and driftwood were kept going to dry things out. ”

“ Dr Strahan, assuming that the range of the tides was the same as at the present day, and noting the present highest level to which the salt-marshes reach, comes to the conclusion that 55 feet at least is the amount of the subsidence. I should be inclined to add a few feet more, in order to keep the oak-roots well clear of the highest tide during a westerly gale. An exceptional gale occurring only once during the lifetime of an oak might bank up the sea water sufficiently to kill the tree, if it grew at a lower elevation. ”

“ These same trees may have grown continuously above tide-marks during several successive stages, until at last the upward creeping water rose sufficiently to reach this part of the forest. The large well-grown oaks seen in Mount’s Bay and various other places are, as far as I have seen, all rooted on [Pg 119] ancient gravels, solid rock, or boulder clay, not on beds of silt.
We cannot speak confidently as to the time needed to form each thin layer of vegetable soil, marsh peat, or estuarine silt. ”

“ It crept slowly south and east from day to day, a distance of four or five miles over slopes facing north and east, without injury to the evenly distributed oak timber, well described as "Orchard Oak." Most of this was not fully grown, and I may say, never did nor will attain full growth. No one thought at the time that that slow grass-fire was Nature's process of preparing a seed-bed for the red and yellow fir that would grow up so thick as to arrest and in many cases utterly kill the deep-rooting oak ”

“ The sand ridge containing the osseous relics has been preserved from the wasting effects of the winds by the thickets of dwarf oak and sweet bay with which it is overgrown. Some of the live oaks at its eastern base are of sufficient girth to indicate an age of two centuries. ”

“ A vast number must of necessity lie dormant in the soil for centuries. In Denmark, since glacial times, there has evidently been a succession of forests—oak following fir and beech following oak through a period of many thousands of years. ”

“ Accordingly, their forest growth is prevalently that of the poorer class of uplands, viz., small-sized post and black-jack oaks, and in the low ground depauperated water oak, or less commonly willow oak, of the low, stunted type indicative of a soil of inferior productiveness. The luxuriant growth of the present alluvial bottom is often seen within a few feet of the unthrifty vegetation of these hammocks. It is usually only in the limestone regions, and in the lower course of the larger streams, that the hammocks or second bottoms are found to be of good fertility. ”

“ A short distance beyond Holmen, the new road terminated, and we took the old track over steep spurs of the mountain, rising merely to descend and rise again. The Lougen River here forms a broad, tranquil lake, a mile in width, in which the opposite mountains were splendidly reflected. The water is pale, milky-green colour, which, under certain effects of light, has a wonderful aerial transparency. As we approached Lösnäs, after this long and tedious stage, I was startled by the appearance of a steamer on the river. It is utterly impossible for any to ascend the rapids below Moshûûs ”

“ Thus the seaward ends were continuously occupied by sea, from the time when the oak-forest sank right on into historic times, and over this deeply buried oak-forest we only find alternate layers of silt and sea-sand. Evidence of the later submerged forest, however, is not entirely wanting, for the submerged wooden bridge or causeway of Pentuan must belong to the period when the trees seen on the foreshore elsewhere were flourishing well above high-water mark. ”

“ The great extent of sand which it has is damaging in its effect, for only at the time of the melting of the snow or in the rainy season does water fill copiously all the stream beds in the oak forest. Nevertheless it would be easy to get water if a mission were established. For this oak forest, which contains about 3,000 souls34 who want baptism and a mission, is the place most suitable for a mission of all that we have explored. There are fine lands for cultivation and great meadows in many parts of the oak forest which are green all the time. ”