136 The Forest Trees of Wiltshire. 
in almost every instance where minute particulars are given— 
(except where the passage is marked as a quotation)—he has himself 
seen or measured the trees of which he is speaking. 
The description of Wiltshire by an old author, namely, that the 
northern parts are the paradise of horned cattle, and the southern 
the paradise of sheep, would seem to indicate that, in the former, 
forests and giant trees must be looked for, rather than in the latter. 
With regard to trees, generally, that appears to be the fact; but 
with respect to forests, the south seems at any rate to have been 
equal to the north. But where, now, are the forests of Bredon, 
Chut, Gaiternac, Pemshaur, Sanernack and Selwood, mentioned 
by Sir Henry Spermay, in his list of Wiltshire forests? Gone; 
all gone, as forests, except Sanernack, now spelt Savernake, the 
glory of the county, and one of the glories of the kingdom, if not 
its chief glory; and Selwood, presuming that Longleat, a forest in 
all but name, formed part of it, which probably it did. Chut, of 
course is Chute, but whatever remains of a forest may be found 
there, can hardly be claimed as belonging to Wiltshire. Of the 
other three, nothing in the shape of a forest is to be seen :— the 
names even of Gaiternac and Pemshaur not being in any modern 
list of parishes or places; and Bredon, which most likely means 
Braydon, having been disafforested in the reign of Charles IT. 
Speaking at large, the Brxcu, the Exim, and the Oax may be 
said to be the trees of the county; and in such numbers are they 
found, and of such a size and age that they may reasonably be 
supposed to be indigenous. But with regard to the elm, the one 
which from its undisputed predominance in all the valleys, as well 
of the adjoining counties as of Wilts ;—from its almost spontaneous 
growth, a growth so nearly spontaneous that were the scythe and 
cattle kept out of the rich pastures for some dozen years, every 
valley would become a dense forest, were not even one single tree 
to be planted by the hand of man. But with regard to the elm, | 
strange to say, its being indigenous in England is disputed. The 
Builder assumes that it is not ; that is to say, that the common elm, 
the Ulmus campestris, is not; the Wych, or Scotch Elm only being 
so. Whether, as the Builder asserts, “the common elm is not 

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