134 LAST OF THE POLLOK WYCH ELMS. 
caused a sudden check, but which only affected them for two 
years. If the trees grew from youth on the same site as that on 
which we knew them, the check in growth may have been due to 
two bad seasons; but if our forefathers were in the habit of 
transplanting trees of some size, it may have been that they were 
transplanted at this age, as the nature and extent of the variation 
is very like what would happen through that process. 
The steady progress from the sixteenth to the twenty-ninth year 
indicates an uneventful time, and the diminished growth of the 
latter year might safely be put down to a bad season or to some 
digging operations about the trees in the spring when growth was 
beginning. 
Again, at the thirty-ninth year, there is a falling-off, which 
continues in a decreasing degree until the forty-fourth year. This 
has the appearance of having been caused by a sudden removal 
of shelter, and the gradual improvement would be the result either 
of the surrounding trees, etc., thickening up again, or by the trees 
getting accustomed to their more open position. In all probability 
it would be the former, as at the fifty-fourth year a decreasing 
growth in thickness sets in, which continues for about seven years, 
indicating that the growing space was becoming more limited, and 
at the sixteenth year the trees would appear to be somewhat 
crowded, and instead of growing in diameter would be stretching 
up very rapidly. 
The sudden improvement at this age can no doubt be accounted 
for by a judicious removal of some of the neighbouring trees, 
which gave the elms sufficient growing space, but did not remove 
the shelter altogether, nor expose them to such an extent that the 
extra light and air had an injurious effect. From this age until 
they reached one hundred and twenty years there does not appear 
to have been any marked variation in their progress, but when 
they reached the latter age there is evidence of something little 
short of an upheaval occurring, which caused a sudden and severe 
check, from which they never properly recovered. The explanation 
I would suggest for this is that probably all the surrounding trees 
were removed, which would interfere very seriously with the 
specimens left. What took place at this time cannot be said, but 
I believe that there was no very great change in their surroundings 
from that time until we saw them, and this opinion is borne out 
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