132 LAST OF THE POLLOK WYCH ELMS. 
commercial measurement, two hundred and eighty-six cubic feet, 
and in actual contents about three hundred and seventy cubic feet, 
and would weigh about thirteen tons. 
In reckoning the age from the annual rings the task was not 
much easier than in the former case, for although it had not 
ceased growing up to the last, the increment was very little and 
the rings very close. When it is considered that of late years the 
average annual increase in circumference was exactly half-an-inch, 
and the wood formed composed almost entirely of vessels, it is 
easily understood that the outside rings were rather difficult to 
follow; but, withal, a fairly accurate estimate was got by successive 
attempts, which resulted in making it three hundred and six years 
old. But this tree was cut rather high and about three or four 
years’ growth were lost, which would make it about three hundred 
and ten years, thus corresponding with the age of the two blown 
down in 1894, and also with that of the fourth tree (which counted 
two hundred and ninety-seven), if we admit that it had made 
nothing since 1892. So that there seems little reason to doubt 
the statement made earlier, viz., that the trees had stood on the 
same site for not less than three hundred years, and probably 
about three hundred and ten years. 
Now, with your permission, I will try to picture something of 
the life-history of these trees, and that not altogether from 
imagination, although it requires a little exercise of that faculty 
to assist. 
As is well known to everyone, trees—like all other plants—are 
influenced by their surroundings, but they have a knack of 
recording within themselves something of what has happened 
about them, by the regularity or irregularity of the annual rings 
or layers of wood, and it is from these that I purpose making a 
few deductions. But before doing so I will endeavour to describe 
this formation of rings, of which I made a very careful study, in 
which I found that the two trees showed the very same 
characteristics. Whatever affected the growth at any particular 
date showed no variation in the two specimens; thus proving 
that something had happened to cause the same variation in 
growth in both trees. 
Speaking generally, the trees grew rapidly in early years, but 
did not form very large rings. When fifty-four years old one was 
a 
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