OLD AND REMARKABLE TREES IN BRITAIN. 267 



A mulching of short cut grass has sometimes been found beneficial 

 for top dressing the soil around and over the roots of choice or rare 

 specimen trees and shurbs, and it has often proved of much advan- 

 tage to the Araucaria imbricala, Cedrus deodara, and other newer 

 introductions, in many places, acting not only as a manure, but also as 

 a preventive against evaporation, and as an important agent for 

 retaining the moisture in the soil. Such an application plays a 

 double part, and is worthy of more general adoption than at present 

 is accorded to it. If the covering be neatly laid on, and closely and 

 evenly spread, there is nothing unsightly in this mulching, and it is 

 of very great advantage in many other ways. 



Another fertile source of incipient decline, and a means of 

 accelerating decay and death in old trees, is the practice of leaving 

 dead wood, and allowing nature to rid herself, by the intervention 

 of wind or storm, of many a useless dead bare limb or branch, 

 which should have been skilfully removed when death became 

 apparent. The rugged wound which a gale of wind causes in 

 wrenching off dead branches from the heavy limbs of a tree is the 

 source of much ultimate evil. "Weather works down into the scar so 

 created, and the dry woody tissues of the stump aid the further 

 spread of decay. Old timber trees should, as regularly as young 

 plantations, be gone over carefully every year, and have all dead or 

 dying big branches and twigs sawn over, the wounds being, at the 

 time, covered with a good coating of strong od paint. 



This leads us to consider the other process of conservation of 

 large trees, referred to in the early part of this paper, viz., — to the 

 cases of those in which all progressive vigour is beyond recall, but 

 whose picturesque and gnarled trunks or hollow stems, from histori- 

 cal associations or traditionary legend attaching to them, it may be 

 desirable to use every possible means to preserve. The appliances 

 in such cases are mainly mechanical. Painting the shattered wound 

 caused by the livid thunder-bolt, so as to exclude the destructive 

 ravages of the wind and rain ; roofing over with zinc or lead the 

 hollow decaying stem of some historical memorial ; girding with iron 

 hoop or rod to its parent stem some giant limb, whose swaying form 

 the hurricane has well-nigh wrenched from the old trunk, are reme- 

 dies too well known and generally practised to call for any notice in 

 this paper. But there is one means for the better protection and 

 supervision of the state of old and historical or remarkable trees 

 throughout Britain, which, we venture to suggest, would do more to 

 call attention to such ancient landmarks and historical fingerposts, 



