SIZE AND GROWTH.

MR. MARSHAM of Stratton, near Norwich, informs me by letter thus: "I became a planter early; so that an oak which I planted in 1720 is become now, at one foot from the earth, twelve feet six inches in circumference, and at fourteen feet (the half of the timber length) is eight feet two inches. So if the bark was to be measured as timber, the tree gives one hundred and sixteen and a half feet, buyer's measure. Perhaps you never heard of a larger oak while the planter was living. I flatter myself that I increased the growth by washing the stem, and digging a circle as far as I supposed the roots to extend, and by spreading sawdust, &c. as related in the Philosophical Transactions. I wish I had begun with beeches, (my favourite trees as well as yours), I might then have seen very large trees of my own raising. But I did not begin with beech till 1741, and then by seed; so that my largest is now, at five feet from the ground, six feet three inches in girth, and with its head spreads a circle of twenty yards diameter. This tree was also dug round, washed, &c." Stratton, 24 July, 17901.

1 Robert Marsham, of Stratton Strawless, a country gentleman of similar tastes in many respects with Gilbert White, commenced his observations on some of the proceedings of nature at an earlier period than our historian, and continued them to a later date. A register of the indications of spring, published by him in the Philosophical Transactions, begins in 1736, and is continued for more than half a century. His latest paper in that valuable collection, is devoted to an account of the measurements of trees, being supplemental to a communication made by him nearly forty years before. It contains, among others, the girth of the oak planted by himself in 1720: a singular instance of longevity combined with perseverance in the same pursuit. Few are the men who live to measure trees planted by themselves seventy-seven years previously!

It was at the hospitable seat of his "very worthy and ingenious friend, Robert Marsham," that Stillingfleet prepared his Calendar of Flora for 1755, which has been already referred to. He thus speaks of its situation: "All the country about is a dead flat; on one side is a barren black heath; on the other a light sandy loam; partly tilled, partly pasture land sheltered with fine groves."-E. T. B.

The circumference of trees planted by myself, at one

foot from the ground (1790).

The great oak in the Holt, which is deemed by Mr. Marsham to be the biggest in this island, at seven

2 It is now impossible so to identify the trees whose measurements are given in the text, as to warrant a statement of their actual circumference, and thus to afford data for determining their rate of growth in their

feet from the ground, measures in circumference thirtyfour feet. It has in old times lost several of its boughs, and is tending to decay. Mr. Marsham computes, that at fourteen feet length this oak contains one thousand feet of timber3.

It has been the received opinion that trees grow in height only by their annual upper shoot. But my neighbour over the way, whose occupation confines him to one spot, assures me that trees are expanded and raised in the lower parts also. The reason that he gives is this: the point of one of my firs began for the first time to peer over an opposite roof at the beginning of summer; but before the growing season was over, the whole shoot of the year, and three or four joints of the body beside, became visible to him as he sits on his form in his shop. According to this supposition, a tree may earlier, and in their more mature years. The greatest beech which I observed in 1835, in the park-like enclosure at the back of Gilbert White's house at Selborne, measured ten feet in circumference at about one foot from the ground: the largest ash in the same enclosure, nine feet: and a fine fir, which the author was wont to speak of as his eldest son, and which is perhaps the great fir alluded to above, measured eight feet in circumference. If, however, the great fir be the same with Gilbert White's eldest son, its growth during the last forty-five years has been slow as compared with that which took place in the forty earlier years of its existence.-E. T. B.

3 There are in the Holt two great oaks; one known as the Grindstone, and the other as the Buck's Horn. The former, I apprehend, is the one measured by Mr. Marsham. At about five feet from the ground its circumference is fully thirty-six feet. It is now a ruin merely, and destitute altogether of life: a massive ruin, however, which will resist, through generations yet to come, the utmost force of the elements. Its singularly formed and gigantic vertical branch will probably be severed, before many years are past, from the stupendous trunk: but the trunk itself will endure. The care which has been judiciously taken to preserve it from wanton or thoughtless injury, is highly praiseworthy: both it and the Buck's Horn are surrounded by a fence and hedge.

The Buck's Horn oak is of a very different form from the Grindstone. It is not yet entirely dead. A figure of it, from a sketch taken at the same time with that from which the above drawing was made, will be given in the work entitled Selborne and its Vicinity, to which I have already had occasion to refer for the further illustration of much of the local scenery.-E. T. B.

Mr. White is innocent of this observation, and merely relates the

advance in height considerably, though the summer shoot should be destroyed every year.

FLOWING OF SAP.

Ir the bough of a vine is cut late in the spring, just before the shoots push out, it will bleed considerably; but after the leaf is out, any part may be taken off without the least inconvenience. So oaks may be barked while the leaf is budding; but as soon as they are expanded, the bark will no longer part from the wood, because the sap that lubricates the bark and makes it part, is evaporated off through the leaves.

RENOVATION OF LEAVES.

WHEN oaks are quite stripped of their leaves by chafers, they are clothed again soon after Midsummer with a beautiful foliage; but beeches, horse-chestnuts, and maples, once defaced by those insects, never recover their beauty again for the whole season.

ASH-TREES.

MANY ash-trees bear loads of keys every year, others never seem to bear any at all. The prolific ones are naked of leaves and unsightly; those that are sterile abound in foliage, and carry their verdure a long while, and are pleasing objects.

BEECH.

BEECHES love to grow in crowded situations, and will insinuate themselves through the thickest covert, so as to surmount it all: are therefore proper to mend thin places in tall hedges.

It seems

assertion of a shopkeeper, which I apprehend was erroneous. quite impossible that an expansion of such magnitude should have taken place.-W. H.

SYCAMORE.

MAY 12. The sycamore, or great maple, is in bloom, and at this season makes a beautiful appearance, and affords much pabulum for bees, smelling strongly like honey. The foliage of this tree is very fine, and very ornamental to outlets. All the maples have saccharine juices.

GALLS OF LOMBARDY POPLAR.

THE stalks and ribs of the leaves of the Lombardy poplar are embossed with large tumours of an oblong shape, which, by incurious observers, have been taken for the fruit of the tree. These galls are full of small insects, some of which are winged, and some not. The parent insect is of the genus of Cynips. Some poplars in the garden are quite loaded with these excrescences.

CHESTNUT TIMBER.

JOHN CARPENTER brings home some old chestnuttrees which are very long; in several places the woodpeckers had begun to bore them. The timber and bark of these trees are so very like oak, as might easily deceive an indifferent observer, but the wood is very shakey, and towards the heart cup-shakey (that is to say, apt to separate in round pieces like cups), so that the inward parts are of no use. They were bought for the purpose of cooperage, but must make but ordinary barrels, buckets, &c. Chestnut sells for half the price of oak; but has sometimes been sent into the king's docks, and passed off instead of oak.

LIME BLOSSOMS.

DR. CHANDLER tells, that in the south of France, an infusion of the blossoms of the lime-tree (Tilia) is in much esteem as a remedy for coughs, hoarsenesses,