of very luxuriant growth and heavy foliage, with thick fleshy bark, affording much tannin; others, though in favourable situation, of stunted growth, thin dry bark, and delicate constitution, often being nipped in the twigs by the frost: some having a round easy figure of top, even with pendulous branching, others extremely stiff and angular in the branching; some with the most elegant foliage, deeply sinuated and finely waved, others with the clumsiest, most misshapen foliage, almost as if opposite principles had presided at their forming. We have observed the earlier kinds, with the dark bark, to have generally the easiest figure of top; the angular branching and stiffness of figure of top being greatest in those sooty-barked late kinds, most disposed to take two growths in the season, the spring and autumnal, which, from the proneness of these kinds to be affected in the terminal bud by monstrosities, and sometimes also to be nipped in the point of the unripened autumn shoot by the frost, are generally thrown out in different directions, the tree, from these causes, growing awkwardly and irregularly, and by fits and starts. Besides the indigenous _Quercus Robur_, we have {34} a number of kinds, termed distinct species, growing in Britain, of foreign derivation—the Turkish oak, _Quercus Cerris_; the Lucombe oak, _Q. sempervirens_; the scarlet-leaved American, _Q. coccinea_; the evergreen, _Q. Ilex_, and several others. The Turkish and Lucombe resemble each other, but the latter generally continues green till the spring, when the old leaves wither, a little before the young appear: Botanists make them varieties. We consider the Turkish oak the most valuable and elegant of these foreign kinds. The leaves are generally very long and slender, deeply and widely sinuated, and the teeth or salient angles sometimes undulated, having a curled appearance; yet there are some individuals with broad, short, flat leaves, not differing in figure from those of the common oak, but the tree in other respects not different from the Turkish, being easily distinguished from the common oak by the reddish hairy appearance of the developing shoot, the scales of the bud having a hair-like extension, visible in each leaf axilla. The acorns are also bristled like echini, with this scaly prolongation. The timber is tough and clean, resembling the white American, and suitable for staves. The stem and branches are generally very straight, as the terminal bud seldom fails, and the growing proceeds steadily, without much autumnal shoot. {35}