238 HISTOEICAL NOTICE OF CELEBRATED TREES. [Aug. 

 HISTORICAL NOTICE OF SOME CELEBRATED TREES 



BY THE LATE PROFESSOK WALKEK ARXOTT, SLD. 



Part III, — The Ash, Walnut, and Oak. 

 The Ash. 



OF the ash {Fraxinus excelsior), few authentic accounts have 

 been obtained from which either its age or rate of growth, 

 can be satisfactorily determined. One of the largest in Scotland, 

 if not in Britain, deserves notice. It seems to have been long 

 one of the protecting sentinels round the churchyard of the 

 parish of Bonhill, in Dumbartonshire ; no tradition exists of its age, 

 which has in vain been endeavoured to be traced by means of the 

 concentric layers of its stem; but it is said that about 200 years 

 ago it was known by the name of the " big tree of Bonhill." The 

 statistical account of the parish, in 1792, gives the following 

 details : — " The ash tree in the churchyard of Bonhill deserves a 

 particular description, being no less remarkable for its uncommon 

 size than for its extensive spreading, and regularity of its branches. 

 The trunk, immediately above the surface of the ground, is 2 5 feet 

 in girth; 3 feet above the surface, it measures 19^ feet, and at 

 the narrowest part 18 feet. It divides into three great branches; 

 the girth of the largest is 11 feet, of the second 10 feet, and of 

 the third 9 feet 2 inches. The branches hang down to within a 

 few feet of the ground, and from the extremity of the branches on 

 the one side to that of those on the other, it measures no less than 

 94 feet." The height is not mentioned, but it must have con- 

 siderably exceeded 100 feet. Since 1792, one of the large branches 

 was blown off by the wind, which nuich disfigured its form : its 

 lateral twigs became thin, and it was shorn of its widely-expanding 

 foliage. It was at length blown to the ground, November 1845 ; 

 when down, it was found to be — at 3 feet above the root, 2 6 feet 

 2 inches ; at the bifurcation, 2 2 feet 6 inches. If these measures 

 were taken at precisely the same point as in 1792, we find the 

 girth to have increased 6 feet 8 inches in 53 years, and conse- 

 quently the tree could only have been about 208 years old ; but this 

 rate of increase, more than half an inch in diameter annually, is 

 certainly much too high, so that the tree may have been much 

 more ancient. There is still at Bonhill House the living skeleton 

 of another ancient ash, which Nicol measured in 1784, and found 

 then to have a circumference of 34 feet 1 inch. 



