Editors Box. 193 



trees seems to be uotliiag uncominon iu that neighbourhood, nor to call for 

 aay special observatiou, though the smallest of the five contained devm 

 loads of thnher, and all the others over thirteen loads each. 



Now these would be counted large trees in any country, and they are 

 by no means common sizes in our own ; and how such a cluster of them 

 got together to be blown down, apparently so nearly of an age and dimen- 

 sions, one would really very much like to know. Also is there any record 

 to be found iu the chronicles of the Longleat Estate (which I cannot find in 

 my Gazetteer) of the period at which these windfalls were planted ? There 

 are other questions, if it were not impertinent, one would like to ask. 

 "Was the timber sold ? and if so, what price did it fetch ? Or was it used 

 on the estate, and for what purposes ? 



In the same number of your journal a writer, who calls himself *' An 

 Amateur," expresses some curiosity about a good-sized poplar tree (of a 

 specified age), stated in your first number to have been recently felled at 

 Liuiithgow, and which seems to have fetched a good bit of money. But 

 this, though containing eighty feet of timber, was a mere sapling in 

 comparison with those overthrown giants of the forest mentioned by Mr. 

 Mainwaring. If the wood of the abele is so valuable, and if, as he states, 

 it grows as fast as the black Italian poplar, it would almosfc appear that an 

 important item of our national wealth has been heretofore very much 

 overlooked. But as the writer of "General Remarks" calls upon Mr. 

 Berry, of Horningsham, by name " to give us some interesting particulars 

 on this subject," it is to be hoped that we shall soon learn from good 

 authority all about the poplar tree, and to what uses its wood may be 

 advantageously converted. 



You invite contributions, Mr. Editor, and the interchange of arborical 

 information, through the medium of your columns, and as several writers 

 have made special allusion to the poplar tree inquisitively, in the portion 

 of your work already before us, they will not perhaps think me presump- 

 tuous if, while I have my pen in my hand, I direct their attention to where 

 practical knowledge on the subject may be obtained, if I have nothing 

 myself worthy their consideration to offer. The study of trees is limited 

 to no place or class of people, and a denizen of the city, who is a lover of 

 the woods, may exchange ideas with a far-off ranger of the wilderness, to 

 the profit of both. Everywhere lessons may be learned in it, and Clapham 

 Common offers to the investigating forester as good a field of research 

 perhaps, as the Trossachs. 



Some years ago there were many large trees of the poplar species on that 

 much frequented pleasure ground of Southern London ; but the infirmities 

 of old age gradually weakening their powers of resistance to the elements, 

 and their stupendous limbs, like mighty elephants' trunks, thrown far up 

 into the sky, becoming at last an intolerable burden, they have been picked 

 oti'by successive gales of wiud, till few of any remarkable magnitude now 

 remain there. 



One fine old specimen, however, of, I think, the black kind (P. nigra) 

 stands almost at the entrance of the common from the London side, and 



VOL. I. P 



