188 The Forest Trees of Wiltshire. 
ledge goes, the finest specimen, in this county, of the common 
elm, is to be found at Holt, near Trowbridge, standing on a small 
triangular green, between the church and Holt brewery, close to 
the latter. On visiting it lately, he ascertained its measurement 
to be as follows :—at about five feet from the ground, twenty-two 
feet in circumference; at between one and two feet, thirty-four 
feet ; and at the ground (as he was told and believes truly,) forty- 
four feet. Its height is generally supposed to be about a hundred 
feet; probably not at all above the mark. So magnificent a tree 
demands some further particulars. The main stem runs up, 
straight, forty feet or more, where further trace of it is lost among 
the branches, which are there so numerous and close that the eye 
cannot follow the “stick”? any higher. At about ten feet from the 
ground, the first limbs, four in number, were thrown out; one on 
each side of the stem: but of these three only remain, one having 
been torn off in a storm some fifty years ago:—the only mutilation 
of any consequence that this noble elm seems to have sustained 
during the many centuries in which it must have been exposed to 
the wars of the elements. That one limb was sold for £15; from 
which circumstance some approximating guess may be formed of 
the great value of the tree at that time; probably some £200 or 
more. The wound caused by this loss, is somewhat lessened by the 
growing-in of the bark, in an effort of nature to close it up; but 
even now the cavity is fully five feet in length, and between three 
and four in breadth. Of the three remaining limbs, some are 
upwards of ten feet in circumference where they spring from the 
trunk. At this point of course as in almost all cases, they are not 
round but oval; an elongated, perpendicular oval, a provision of 
nature to give support to the limb by a sort of fulcrum. They all 
sweep ‘upwards soon after leaving the stem, becoming perpendicular 
or very nearly so, at a distance of some few feet from the bole. 
One of them which continued its horizontal growth further than — 
the others, has at a short distance from its source, sent up a second 
shoot—a branch from a branch—so that there are two large timber 
trees standing up, as it were on a bracket, from the side of the 
parent stem. At some ten or twelve feet above this row of branches, 

