Milford Nursery is, like most others, suffering for want of rain; and in it, as in them, the chief business of the workmen at present is watering. There are a great many new things in this nursery which have not yet been figured in British publications, because they will be so, very shortly, in a work preparing by P. B. Webb, Esq., and the botanist M. Brotero. In the meantime, Mr. Penny is preparing a catalogue of the more rare things, which will soon be printed. As our attention was chiefly directed to the trees, we were pleased to see some thousands of young plants of the sessile-fruited oak; and to have ocular demonstration, on a large scale, that this species or variety is, at least in its young state, of much more rapid and robust growth than the stalk-fruited oak; Messrs. Young and Penny having a large compartment of each sort in their nursery placed adjoining each other, on purpose to show the difference between them. The sessile-fruited oak may be tolerably well distinguished from the other, even in its young state and without acorns, from the majority of the leaves being less sinuated, and having longer footstalks. The trees from which the acorns of the sessile-fruited oak were taken by Mr. Young stand at Burningfold, near Dunsfold or Plaistow, in Surrey, and are the property of Mrs. Woods of Shopwick, near Chichester. We understand they are remarkably fine trees, and we are promised their dimensions. The acorns of the sessile-fruited oak being smaller than those of the other sort, no regular gatherer of acorns will ever collect them unless paid an extra price. Hence the great difficulty which those who know the real value of this oak, and wish to grow it, have in procuring its acorns. In our Arboretum Britannicum we shall have to bring together a great variety of opinions on the merits of these two species of oaks; and, in the mean time, we invite our readers to send us every kind of information in their power respecting them; and we particularly beg of them to look out for both sessile and stalk-fruited acorns on the same branch of the same tree, and to send us dried specimens if they should find any.
