BEECHES IN SCOTLAND. 



181 



ference. The altitude of the site is 430 feet, and exposure to 

 the south-east. Another beech little inferior to this one stood 

 near it, but was unfortunately destroyed by a gale some years 

 ago. Neither of these trees is mentioned by Dr Walker. 

 Next in point of magnitude, so far as our researches show, 

 is the beech tree at Belton, East Lothian. This tree is 63 

 feet high, with a bole of 31 feet, and girths at 1 foot above 

 ground 32 feet 3 inches, and 20 feet 4 inches at 5 feet. In 

 1863, this tree is recorded to have been 19 feet 4 inches 

 at 6 feet from the ground and 17 feet 8 inches, at 9 J feet. 

 Its age is stated to be about 150 years, but this seems 

 much too short a space of time for it to have attained these 

 dimensions. About sixty years ago, almost one-half of its trunk 

 on the west side of the tree was carried away by the falling of a 

 large branch, and twenty years afterwards the cavity caused by this 

 accident in the centre of the trunk was laroe enou<>h to contain 

 three men. It is, however, now very much closed up, and fresh 

 wood is being rapidly formed from a shoot of healthy bark, which 

 must before long quite enclose and hide the ca\-ity. On the east 

 side of its base is a curiosity in the projecting corner of a large 

 stone trough, which in former times had stood at the root of the 

 tree for watering cattle, but over and around which the conoidal 

 base of the trunk has now grown, so that the trough is quite im- 

 bedded in the heart of the bole, and only a small portion of the 

 brim of it is visible ! The next recorded beech proljably, in 

 point of importance at the present day, is the Balmerino Abbey 

 tree, Fife. There are two large and venerable specimens there, 

 and they measure as follows : — 



The trunk of No. 1 divides into limbs at 35 feet, and its bole 

 is much finer than that of No. 2, as it presents its thickness 

 almost uniformly up to the spread of its l»ranches, and contains 

 a greater amount of timber than No. 2, which tapers a good deal, 

 lioth trees are still })erfectly sound and healihy, and are mag- 

 niticent objects when in leaf. These trees are not noticed in 

 Walker's Catalogue, but No. 2 is recorded in the list of trees 

 dated 1812, and which appears in the " Edinburgh ^Vntiquarian 

 Magazine," vul. i. pp. 20 and 23, published in 1848. 



A beech at Leslie House, Fife, wliich in Manli 1812 girthed 

 11 feet at 1> feet from tlie ground, with a lufty bole of 56 feet, 

 now measures 16 feet 8 incites at the same point, and is probably 



