CHAP. II. BRITISH ISLANDS. 93 
Hamilton, close by the palace, being the only garden for the 
sale of plants mentioned by Reid in his Scots Gardener, pub- 
lished in 1683. Among the oaks of Hamilton Park, so famous 
down to the end of the seventeenth century, there were trees, 
Nasmyth informs us, which measured 27 feet round the trunk, 
with wide expansive branches. (Agriculture of Clydesdale, p. 144.) 
Panmurte is the name of an ancient family in Angusshire, whose 
chief seat is the spacious and hospitable mansion of Brechin 
Castle, which, from the remotest period of its history, has always 
been possessed by the Maules, formerly Earls of Panmure. 
Panmure, another seat of this family, is near Dundee, and was 
built about 1665. It is a venerable fabric, and is kept by the 
proprietor, with all its furniture and pictures, in the same state 
in which it descended from his ancestors. In Dr. Walker’s 
time, Panmure was famous for its laburnums, which were planted 
towards the end of the seventeenth century, and had attained a 
great size in 1780. Sang says that a considerable quantity of 
the laburnums at Panmure and Brechin were cut down in 1809, 
and sold by public sale at fully 10s. 6d. a foot, chiefly to cabinet- 
makers. 
New Posso, in Peeblesshire, was formerly called Dalwick, 
Dawick, or Daick. It belonged, in very ancient times, to the 
chiefs of a very considerable family of the name of Veitch; but, 
in 1715, it was in the possession of Sir James Nasmyth of Posso, 
an eminent lawyer, who rebuilt the house and garden, and by 
some ornamental planting added greatly to the beauty of the 
place. Pennicuick mentions that, in an old orchard near the 
house, the herons built their nests upon some pear trees, which 
were large and old trees in 1715. Armstrong, in 1775, says 
that New Posso, formerly called Dalwick, “ from being a lonely 
mansion in the bosom of a gloomy mountain, is now the extreme 
reverse. ‘The vast improvements made by its present possessor 
have proved not only an ornament to Tweeddale, but a worthy 
example for emulation in the gentlemen of the county. The 
botanical and culinary gardens are justly esteemed the most 
copious in it; and the pleasurable attention with which they are 
cultivated, is sufficiently expressed on the front of the green-. 
house, alluding to its flowers, ‘ Solomon in all his glory was 
not arrayed like one of these.’ ” (Armstrong.) 
“The name of New Posso,” Dr. Pennicuick tells us, ** was 
given to the place by Sir James Nasmyth, grandson of the first 
possessor of that name, who was sheriff-depute in 1627. ‘The 
late Sir James Nasmyth of Posso has extended and finished 
the place, and numerous plantations, with as much taste and 
elegance as the Dutch mode of gardening by line and rule will 
admit of. He likewise kept it in high order, and by the su- 
periority of his own external appearance, politeness, knowledge 
