wealth of rookes there.  When I was a boy the two greatest oakes were, one on the hill at the parke at Dracot Cerne; the other at Mr. Sadler’s, at Longley Burrell.  ’Twas of one of these trees, I remember, that the trough of the paper mill at Long-deane, in the parish of Yatton Keynell, anno 1636, was made.  In Garsden Parke (now the Lord Ferrars) is perhaps the finest hollow oake in England; it is not high, but very capacious, and well wainscotted; with a little table, which I thinke eight may sitt round.  When an oake is felling, before it falles, it gives a kind of shreikes or groanes, that may be heard a mile off, as if it were the genius of the oake lamenting.  E. Wyld, Esq. hath heard it severall times.  This gave the occasion of that expression in Ovid’s Metamorph. lib. viii. fab. ii. about Erisichthon’s felling of the oake sacred to Ceres:- “gemitumq{ue} dedit decidua quercus”.

In a progresse of K. Charles I. in time of peace, three score and ten carts stood under the great oake by Woodhouse.  It stands in Sir James Thinne’s land.  On this oake Sir Fr. D——­ hung up thirteen, after quarter.  Woodhouse was a garrison for the Parliament.  He made a sonn hang his father, or è contra.  From the body of this tree to the extreme branches is nineteen paces of Captain Hamden, who cannot pace less than a yard. (Of prodigious trees of this kind you will see many instances in my Sylva, which Mr. Ray has translated and inserted in his Herbal.- J. Evelyn.)
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In the New Forest, within the trenches of the castle of Molwood (a Roman camp) is an old oake, which is a pollard and short It putteth forth young leaves on Christmas day, for about a week at that time of the yeare.  Old Mr. Hastings, of Woodlands, was wont to send a basket full of them every yeare to King Charles I. I have seen of them severall Christmasses brought to my father.

But Mr. Perkins, who lives in the New Forest, sayes that there are two other oakes besides that which breed green buddes about Christmas day (pollards also), but not constantly.  One is within two leagges of the King’s-oake, the other a mile and a halfe off. [Leagges, probably lugs:  a lug being “a measure of land, called otherwise a pole or perch”. (Bailey’s Dictionary.) The context renders leagues improbable.-J.  B.]
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Elmes.-I never did see an elme that grew spontaneously in a wood, as oakes, ashes, beeches, &c.; which consideration made me reflect that they are exotique; but by whom were they brought into this island?  Not by the Saxons; for upon enquiry I am enformed that there are none in Saxony, nor in Denmarke, nor yet in France, spontaneous; but in Italy they are naturall; e. g. in Lombardie, &c.  Wherefore I am induced to believe that they were brought hither out of Italy by the Romans, who were cultivators of their colonies.  The Saxons understood not nor cared for such improvements, nor had hardly leisure if they would.