1883.] EDITORIAL NOTES. 83 



than that, their fathers described and spoke of them as hollow trees 

 when they were children.' 



* * 

 * 



Mr, Vernon Heath adds : — * Of course it may be said that this is 



traditional, but as my own 40 years of watching and observation is 



not, [ think, the evidence of the old people I actually saw and talked 



to may be allowed ; and say that one of these was 80 years of age. 



Then SO and 46 together would bring us to within 20 years of the 



date of Gray's letter. From this I evolve the theory that the boles 



were in liis days much as they are now ; and this being so, I argue 



tliat tlie pollarding occurred long prior to Gray's or Cromwell's period, 



and I believe that whenever it was done the trees were full srown. 



Such being the case, the age that has been accorded them in the 



various articles that have lately been written, viz., 400 or 500 years, 



is obviously a great deal too little. It would not surprise me should 



it be discovered that those veritable giants of land of old were trees 



at the time of the Norman Conquest, it is at least a curious fact 



that the well-defined remains of a moat within the district of the 



Beeches, which by the people in the neighbourhood is called 



" Harlequin's Moat," is, in the old records, written Hardicanute, and 



is, no doubt, one of the places of defence the Danish king made 



when, on the death of his brother, tlie first Harold, he was on his way 



to seize the Crown of England. To the students of tree-life, especially 



to those who have not actual acquaintance with these Beeches, I may 



say that the whole have been pollarded ; that the whole are hollow, 



reduced indeed, as I have said, to a mere shell, and, therefore, all the 



usual means of arriving at a tree's age are absent. I may add that, in 



my records of their size, the girth of one, 5 ft. from the ground, is 



23 ft. 9 in., another 21 ft. 4 in., while one which was blown down in 



1875, the " Autumn " of my fourth season, girthed 25 ft. 6 in.' 



* .,* 



AVe commend those who have not yet seen these remarkable trees 

 — which are quite unlike anything else of their kind — to visit them 

 during the present winter, when a better idea can be had of their 

 curious forms than during their period of leafy beauty. 



