54 ON THE OLD AND llEMAEKABLE 



Qliese trees are all in perfect health, and every five or seven years 

 produce fair crops of chestnuts, when there is a very hot summer 

 after a fine spring. The soil is a sandy loam, on sandy and 

 gravelly subsoil. The date of their having been raised from seed 

 being so well determined, a very good illustration is afforded by 

 this case of the rapid progress with which the Spanish chestnut 

 develops timber in suitable localities in such a climate as that of 

 Scotland. 



Having thus noticed some of the more remarkable Spanish 

 chestnuts in the northern and southern counties of Scotland, 

 while many more in these parts still remain to be described, and 

 for the details of which we can only, consistently with the length 

 of this memoir, refer the reader to the statistical tables appended 

 to it, we should be doing injustice to the great tree-gro wing- 

 central county of Scotland — Perthshire — did we fail to notice 

 some of the more remarkable chestnuts, which are to be found in 

 luxuriance there. "We may say of the forest trees of Perthshire 

 generally, that whether owing to the configuration of the county, 

 and its inland position lending a more continental and less 

 insular quality and value to its climate, there can be no doubt 

 that they exhibit greater vitality and more rapid and better pro- 

 gress within a given period than the hard-wood trees of any 

 other county in Scotland as a whole. We may take the trees of 

 Castle-Menzies, near Aberfeldy, as the representative trees of the 

 county, as indeed they are of Scotland ; for nowhere will so 

 many majestic monarchs of the wood be found unsurpassed in 

 dimensions or in health and beauty, by any other collection in 

 the country. Confining ourselves to the Spanish chestnuts alone 

 (although we might almost be pardoned for quoting instances of 

 the most splendid types of other trees at Castle-Menzies in 

 this paper), we find one grand old tree situated in the washing- 

 green behind the castle, of the following dimensions : — 



At 6 inches from the ground, 26 feet 6 inches; at 2 feet, 22 feet 

 2 inches; at 5 feet, 19 feet 2 inches; at 7 feet, 18 feet 4 inches : 

 60 feet in height, and with a bole of about 12 feet. This tree is 

 much decayed, however, and evidently in declining health. At 

 about 12 feet from the ground it separates into two very large 

 limbs, each of which is the size and girth of many an ordinary 

 well-developed tree in Scotland. The date on the present castle 

 is 1571, but an older building existed on the same site, and from 

 the whole appearance of this tree and its situation, it may pro- 

 bably be referred for its origin to a period coeval with the older 

 building, or at all events to have been planted prior to the 

 existence of the present castle. Another Spanish chestnut at 

 the foot of Weem rock, and behind the garden, girths 19 

 feet 2 inches at 2 feet from the ground, and 15 feet 10 

 inches, at 5 feet. It is about 80 feet high, and has a good 



