212 ON THE OLD AND REMARKABLE 



will only be verified by futurity, when the oak comes to be 

 removed, and the remains of the veritable teapot are found em- 

 bosomed in its trunk ! On an oak in the vicinity on the Crieff 

 and Comrie highroad, just opposite Ochtertyre West Lodge, there 

 is a very curious growth or huge wart-like excrescence on an oak 

 tree, worthy of note from its size. It is spheroidal in shape, 

 slightly oblate, with a short axis in supporting branch, — inclin- 

 ation of branch about 45 degrees, girth of the branch 14 inches, 

 and girth of the growth at its widest circumference 6 feet 3 

 inches. 



The oaks in the returns from Glendevon, Perthshire (900 to 

 950 feet altitude), and from Moreland, Kinross-shire (900 feet 

 altitude), are good specimens for so high a site above sea level, 

 and although the oak is thereby seen to develop less timber-bulk 

 at such a height than in lower situations, it is proved to grow 

 timber there of fine quality, and the constitution of the tree for 

 hardihood to exposure is satisfactorily tested. 



The many districts in Perthshire, besides Athole and Dunkeld 

 already referred to, where buried trunks of huge oaks have been 

 found and exhumed, all point to the inference that its entire area, 

 and that of neighbouring shires also, was at an early period one 

 huge impenetrable forest. In the days of the aborigines such 

 vast forests extended all over Scotland, giving to the inhabitants, 

 indeed, their name, for Caledonia originally means the country 

 of " the people of the coverts." These native forests appear to 

 have consisted principally of fir, birch, and oak. In Balquidder 

 large stumps and trunks of a defunct forest of oak are frequently 

 found. In Strathtay fossil wood is often met with, and in the 

 gardens at Murthley Castle, from the bottom of a lake in the 

 American garden, several large oaks have been discovered above 

 6 feet in girth. Picmains of birch, alder, hazel, were also found 

 in a tolerable state of preservation in this lake bottom. Glen- 

 more, a narrow valley in the parish of Fortingall, was in early 

 times part of the extinct Forest of Schieh allien ; and for a long 

 period the stumps of fir trees, and large trunks of oak, furnished 

 the inhabitants of the district with a profitable product,' — the fir 

 being used as fuel, when it is stated to have " emitted a light 

 more brilliant than gas," while the oak wood, on being dried and 

 exposed, proved so hard as to be manufactured into sharpening 

 tools for scythes which were readily marketable. In the bed of 

 the Tay frequently large oaks have been found in situ, and in 

 good preservation. 



But returning from this digression, and having in considerable 

 detail noticed the remarkable oaks of Perth and the more 

 northern districts of Scotland, we hasten briefly to direct atten- 

 tion to the trees in other counties further south. At Tullibody 

 House, Clackmannan, there is a very handsome oak of immense 



