174 ON THE OLD AND REMARKABLE 



ON THE OLD AND REMARKABLE BEECHES (Fagiis sylvatica) 



IN SCOTLAND. 



By Robert Hutchison of Carlowrie. 



\_Prim,ium — The Gold Medal."] 



It is somewhat remarkable that there should be so few recorded 

 instances amongst old WTiters of large beech trees in Scotland, 

 considering the wide distribution which this tree has attained, 

 and that it is so general over the country at the present day. 



Dr Walker, wlio wrote his Catalogue, " after forty years' obser- 

 vation," in 1798, mentions only four examples, and one of these 

 he gives as a remarkable tree, though it only girthed 8 feet in 

 1780 ! And in the list compiled in 1812, and published in the 

 "Edinburgh Antiquarian Magazine " (voL i. pp. 20-23), in 1848, 

 only seven are stated, three of them being also identical trees 

 with those given by Walker. From the many large specimens 

 whose dimensions and localities are appended to the present 

 report, we might surely have had a longer list handed down to 

 us by those earlier observers, for many of these now given must 

 have been in existence, and been trees of no mean circumference, 

 when Walker wrote, unless it be that many or most of the first 

 planted beeches in Scotland having [attained timber dimensions, 

 and their wood being found of little value for constructive or 

 domestic purposes, had, in the absence of the mining industry 

 of the present day, which has rendered the fuel supply indepen- 

 dent of wood, been felled and consumed as fuel, so that probably 

 only a few very notable examples, whose position in ornamental 

 grounds had saved them, remained to testify how admirably 

 suited for extensive development of trunk and bole the beech 

 tree is, in almost every soil and situation in Scotland. Loudon, 

 in his great work, throws very little light on the cause of this 

 apparent paucity of very notable beeches in Scotland. He does 

 not mention individually any fresh examples beyond those given 

 by Walker, excepting one (since blown over) at Prestonhall, Mid- 

 lothian. He incidentally, however, mentions that " a number of 

 other fine beech trees existed in Scotland in Walker's time," and 

 that " Mr Sang and Sir T. Dick-Lauder have added several other 

 remarkable examples." From these statements it would appear 

 that about the beginning of the present century, few of the old 

 and originally planted beeches survived in Scotland, but that a 

 copiously planted crop, introduced extensively about the time of 

 the Eevolution, was then forming considerable timber, and is 

 now to be traced out in such tracts as those we find in such 

 woods, of which beech trees form a main feature, as may be 

 seen at Inveraray, Ormiston, Hopetoun, Craigiehall, Hawthornden, 



