The Great Duke of Thuscany carried
furzes out of England for a rarity in his magnificent garden. I never
saw such dwarft furzes as at Bowdon parke; they did but just peep
above the ground.
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Oakes (the best of trees).-We had great plenty before the
disafforestations. We had in North Wiltshire, and yet have, though not
in the former plenty, as good oakes as any in England. The best that
we have now (1670) are at Okesey Parke, Sir Edward Poole's, in
Malmesbury hundred; and the oakes at Easton Piers (once mine) were,
for the number, not inferior to them. In my great-grandfather Lite's
time (15--) one might have driv'n a plough over every oake in the oak-
close, which are now grown stately trees. The great oake by the day-
house [dairy house - J. B.] is the biggest oake now, I believe, in all
the countie. There is a common 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.
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