gland, and Glendower was to meet him with such forces as he could collect in Wales. As soon as the king was aware of these hostile movements, he marched in all haste, to come up with Hotspur before he was joined by Glendower. The royal army entered Shrewsbury only a few hours before Hotspur arrived at the gates. This was on the 19th of July, and the king was anxious to give battle without delay, Hotspur, however, did not feel himself strong enough for this, having not above fourteen thousand men in his army, whereas the king had nearly double that number. On the following morning, the king's forces marched out of the town, and succeeded in forcing Hotspur to an engagement, of which the following interesting account is taken from the History of Shrewsbury. The fight began by furious and repeated volleys of arrows from Hotspur's archers, whose ground greatly favoured that kind of warfare; and they did great execution on the royal army. The king's bowmen were not wanting in return, and the battle raged with violence. Hotspur, with his associate, Douglas, bent on the king's destruction, rushing through the midst of the hostile arrows, pierced their way to the spot on which he stood. "Henry was thrice unhorsed, and would have been taken or slain, had he not been defended and rescued by his own men: and the fortune of the day would have been forthwith decided, if the Earl of March had not withdrawn him from the danger; for the royal standardbearer was slain, his banner beaten down, and many of the chosen band appointed to guard it, were killed by these desperate assailants; while the young Prince of Wales was wounded in the face by an arrow. In short, notwithstanding all the 1 exertions of the royalists, victory seemed inclined to favour the rebel army, who fought with renewed ardour, from an opinion, naturally derived from the overthrow of his standard, that the king himself had fallen, and animated each other to the combat with cheering and redoubled shouts of Henry Percy, king! Henry Percy, king!' In this critical moment, the gallant Percy, raging through the adverse ranks in quest of his sovereign, fell by an unknown hand, alone, and hemmed in by foes. The king lost no time to avail himself of this event. Straining his voice to the utmost, he exclaimed aloud, Henry Percy is dead:' and the battle soon ended in the king gaining a complete victory. "In the mean while, Owen Glendower had marched with a large body of Welchmen to within a mile of Shrewsbury; and if the king had not been so rapid in his movements, Glendower and Hotspur would probably have joined their forces. It was necessary, however, that the Welch army should cross the Severn, which, at this place, is a broad and rapid river. It happened, also, most unfortunately for Glendower, that the water was at this time exceedingly high. There is a ford at Shelton, by which, at other seasons, he would have been able to cross the river, but now it was impossible. The bridges at Shrewsbury were commanded by the king; and he had nothing to do but to halt his army on the banks of the Severn, though he could see Hotspur's forces quite plainly on the opposite side, and though he knew that the king was wishing to bring on a battle. The battle took place as we have related. "The place, where the fight was thickest, is about three miles from Shrewsbury, and is still called Battle-field; and King Henry built a handsome church there, which is still used as a parish church, though | trunk on a hot summer's day; and great part of it is in ruins." to hear a heavy shower of rain descending through the several stages of its leaves.--GILPIN. There is no difficulty in believing, from the present appearance of the tree, that it is old enough to have been of a considerable size in the year 1403, or 429 years ago. Oaks are known to live to a much greater age than this; and there are documents which prove that the Shelton oak was a fine large tree some centuries ago. It is still perfectly alive, and bears some hundreds of acorns every year, though it has great marks of age, and is so hollow in the inside, that it seems to stand on little more than a circle of bark. At least six or eight persons might stand within it. The dimensions are as follows: The girth at bottom, close to the ground, is forty-four feet three inches; at five feet from the ground, twenty-five feet one inch; at eight feet from the ground, twenty-seven feet four inches. Height of the tree, forty-one feet six inches. PLINY mentions a plane-tree, which flourished in Lycia, during the reigns of the Roman Cæsars, which had attained an unusual size. From a vast stem it divided into several huge arms; every one of which had the consequence of a large tree; and, at a distance, the whole together exhibited the appearance of a grove. Its branches still flourished, while its trunk decayed. This, in process of time, mouldered away into an immense cave, at least eighty feet in circumference; around the sides of which, were placed seats of pumice stone, cushioned softly with moss. Lucinus Mutianus, governor of Lycia, has left it on record, that himself and eighteen other persons could commodiously dine in this tree; he frequently enjoyed the company of his friends there, and used to say, it was a great luxury to dine in its THE celebrated Admiral Lord Collingwood, remarks in a letter dated the Dreadnought, off Ushant, 1805. "If the country gentlemen do not make it a point to plant oaks wherever they will grow, the time will not be very distant, when, to keep our navy, we must depend entirely on captures from the enemy. You will be surprised to hear that most of the knees which were used in the Hibernia, were taken from the Spanish ships captured on the 14th of February; and what they could not furnish was supplied by iron. I wish every body thought on this subject as I do; they would not walk through their farms without a pocket-full of acorns to drop in the hedge-sides, and then let them take their chance." RENEWAL OF OLD TREES. THAT some old trees have a power of renewal, which seems scarcely consistent with the usual operations of nature, is a circumstance that has been sometimes observed, and the following remarks extracted from a little book, entitled, A Week at Christmas, may be relied upon as a fact. One of the trees there mentioned, is still growing on the Banks of the Wear, a few miles from Durham. This old oak is always the first in the neighbourhood to put forth its leaves, and it remains green in the autumn, after all others are either brown and withered, or even entirely stripped of their foliage. "I will relate some curious circumstances respecting the growth of trees that have fallen under my own eyes. I recollect when a child, an old oak that grew in a hedge near my father's house: it was decayed and quite hollow within. Many a time my sisters and I used to climb to the top of the hollow, to examine a nest that a little bird had built there, and where she reared her young family. "In time, this hollow was filled up with sound wood, and when I was last at my father's house, instead of our old hollow oak, I saw a fine sound tree, with just a scar remaining up one side, where the latest growth had taken place. "Some years ago, I remarked an old alder that seemed to have been decayed and hollow for a great length of time, and I observed from a flourishing branch in the upper part of the tree, a sort of roots coming down, as if in search of the earth for nourishment. Mr. Nicholson and I have frequently visited it, and found that the roots crept down the hollow amongst the decayed wood, till they reached the ground: and there deriving nourishment, swelled, united, and became as the bole of the tree, filling up the great cavity, and displacing all the mouldering wood, till the whole is now nearly a solid tree." T. J. Mr Jesse, also, thus speaks of some fine old trees in Windsor Forest: "It is impossible to view some of these 'Sires of the Forest,' without feeling a mixture of admiration and wonder. The size of some of them is enormous; one beech-tree near Sawyer's Lodge in Windsor Great Park, measuring, at six feet from the ground, thirty-six feet round. It is now protected from injury, and nature seems to be doing her best towards repairing the damage which its exposure to the attacks of man and beast have produced. It must once have been almost hollow, but the vacuum, has been nearly filled up. One might almost fancy that liquid wood, which had afterwards hardened, had been poured into the tree. The twistings and distortions of this huge substance have a curious and striking effect, and one might almost imagine them to have been produced by a convulsive throe of nature. There is no bark on this extraneous substance, but the surface is smooth, hard, and without any appearance of decay. "There are two magnificent old oaks near Cranbourne Lodge in Windsor Great Park,-one of them is just within the park paling and about 300 yards from the Lodge, and the other stands at the point of the road leading up to it. The former, at six feet from the ground, measures thirty-eight feet round. The venerable appearance of this fine old oak, his high top bald with dry antiquity,'-the size and expanse of its branches--the gnarled and rugged appearance of its portly trunk, and the large projecting roots which emanate from it, fill the mind at once with admiration and astonishment. "The other tree nearer to Cranbourne Lodge, is thirty-six feet in circumference at four feet from the ground, and may be considered as almost coeval with the one I have just been attempting to describe. Departing from her usual practice, Nature, in this instance, seems only in some respects to have resumed her vigour. This may be seen by a number of little feathering branches which have been thrown out of the stem. Another old pollard, not far from it, has only one live branch left; a branch which seems to flourish amidst decay. Hollies, thorns, and here and there a stunted hornbeam, look as if they might have been placed there for the purpose of keeping off any unhallowed intruders on the retirement of these venerable patriarchs, who, in return, seem to stretch forth the horizontal twistings of their large extended branches, to afford protection and shelter to their more humble brethren of the forest. "A little further on, to the left, where the ground somewhat rises, is a fine old pollard, which still flourishes; there being only one dead branch, which projects from the centre of the foliage. It is a fine specimen of old age in a tree. It measures twenty-seven feet round the middle of the trunk."-Gleanings in Natural History, Second Series. "The most interesting tree, how-sited there as future memorials of ever, at Windsor, for there can be the interest this tree had excited. little doubt of its identity, is the celebrated Herne's Oak. In following the footpath which leads from the Windsor road to Queen Adelaide's Lodge, in the Little Park, about half way on the right, a dead tree may be seen close to an avenue of elms. This is what is pointed out as Herne's Oak. I can almost fancy it the very picture of death. Not a leaf-not a particle of vitality appears about it. The hunter must have blasted it.' It stretches out its bare and sapless branches, like the skeleton arms of some enormous giant, and is almost fearful in its decay. None of the delightful associations connected with it have however vanished. Among many appropriate passages which it brought to my recollection was the following: there want not many that do fear In deep of night to walk by this Herne's Oak. Its spectral branches might indeed deter many from coming near it "twixt twelve and one.' "The footpath which leads across the park is stated to have passed in former times close to Herne's Oak. The path is now at a little distance from it, and was probably altered in order to protect the tree from injury. "The last acorn I believe which was found on Herne's Oak, was given to the late Sir David Dundas of Richmond, and was planted by him on his estate in Wales, where it now flourishes, and has a suitable inscription near it. I have reason to think that Sir David Dundas never entertained a doubt of the tree I have referred to, being Herne's Oak, and he had the best opportunities of ascertaining it. In digging holes near the tree lately, for the purpose of fixing the present fence round it, several old coins were found, as if they had been depo THE CADENHAM OAK, THOSE of our readers who are acquainted with the New Forest in Hampshire, will probably be familiar with the peculiarities of the Cadenham Oak, which buds every year in the midst of winter. Some also may, perhaps, have themselves seen branches taken from it, adorned, even at that inclement season of the year, with green and living leaves. There is something, however, so very singular and remarkable in the circumstances of the tree, that an account of it can hardly fail to be generally interesting. The village of Cadenham, about three miles from Lyndhurst, lies at a sharp bend in the road which leads to Salisbury. It is prettily situated in a beautiful part of the forest, and the fame of its oak, which has been an object of curiosity for two centuries and a half, has drawn to it numbers of visiters. The story which formerly prevailed amongst the foresters, and which has some very firm supporters, even in the present day, is, that the oak always buds on the morning of old Christmas-day, and has leaves on it on that day, and that day alone. Of this statement, however, as is generally the case with such matters, a part only appears to be true. Mr Gilpin, who lived about fifty years since, gives, in his entertain ing work on Forest Scenery, a very interesting account of the tree, in which he seems to have placed its peculiarities in a true light. "Having often heard of this oak," he tells us, "I took a ride to see it on the 29th of December, 1781. It was pointed out to me amongst several other oaks, surrounded by a little forest-stream, winding round a knoll, on which stood the tree in question. It is a tall, straight plant, of no great age, and apparently vigorous, except that the top has been injured; from which circumstance, several branches issue forth from it, in the form of pollardshoots. It was entirely bare of leaves, as far as I could discover, when I saw it; and was not to be distinguished from the other oaks in its neighbourhood, except that its bark seemed rather smoother, occasioned, I apprehended, only by persons frequently climbing up it." On the morning of the fifth of January, following this visit to the tree, -that is, on old Christmas-day,-a person, he tells us, whom he had engaged to do so, sent him some twigs a few hours after they had been gathered. The leaves were fairly expanded, and about an inch in length, and from some of the buds, two leaves had unsheathed themselves. To this statement, Mr Gilpin adds an account to the same effect, from a respectable country newspaper of the day. "There is no doubt," says that paper, “but that this oak, may in some years, show its first leaves on the Christmas-morning. It is as probable that it should do so on that morning, as on one a few days earlier. And this, perhaps, was the case in 1785, when a gentleman, who was a very nice and critical observer, strictly examined the branches, not only on the Christmas-morning, but also on the day before. On the first day, not a leaf was to be found; but on the following, every branch had its complement of leaves, though they were then but just shooting from the buds, none of them being more than a quarter of an inch long."— Salisbury Journal. These accounts clearly show that the tree did sometimes bud and bear its first leaves on Old Christmas-day, but to prove that the notion of its never budding earlier than that particular day is untrue, we add another anecdote from the same source. A lady from Salisbury went to Cadenham on Monday, January the third, 1786. On her arrival, the guide was ready to attend, but on being desired to climb the oak, and to search whether there were any leaves then on it or not, he said it would be to no purpose. but that if she would come on the Wednesday following, (that is, Old Christmas-day,) she might certainly see thousands. He was, however, prevailed on to ascend; and on the first branch which he ga thered, there appeared, to his infinite amazement, several fair new leaves, just sprouted from the buds, and nearly an inch and a half in length*. Those who state that no leaves are to be seen on the tree after Christmas-day, may easily be believed, for it is well known that large parties assemble every year about the oak on that morning, and regularly strip from it every appearance of leaf. Indeed, if any were to remain, the cold and severity of the weather at that season would soon cause them, new and tender as they must be, to wither and decay. And this view Mr Gilpin confirms. "This early spring of the oak," he observes, "is of very short duration. Even buds, Mr. Gilpin mentions, that there was one of the progeny of this oak, growing in the garden of the Duchess Dowager of Portland, at Bulstrode, which had its buds perfectly formed so early as December the twenty-first, in the year 1781, fifteen days earlier than the usual time. |