REMARKABLE TREES. 209 



this desire is all the more intensified by the fact that 

 Her Majesty Queen Victoria honoured the place with 

 a personal visit in October i S66, and fhe noble larches 

 thus lay claim to the title of Eoyalty, to which they 

 are at least as much entitled as any other trees in the 

 Queen's dominions. 



There is also one tree on the margin of the flower 

 garden of Monymusk deserving special attention. It 

 is of the same ao^e as those at Dunkeld, Monzie Castle 

 and Glenlyon are said to be, and though inferior in 

 size to any of them, is yet a fine specimen. It grew 

 originally along with other two in flower-pots in the 

 dining-room, there being probably no greenhouse at 

 that time, and, as tradition says, the garden larch, as it 

 is termed, grew in a pot till too high, when it was 

 planted into the line of a beech hedge of the flower 

 garden, where the soil is thin and poor, and considerably 

 exposed. Under these disadvantages its side branches 

 had been much confined by the hedge and other trees, 

 which caused it to grow up comparatively tall and 

 bare of branches. It is 70 feet high, 18 feet to the 

 lower branches, girth at base 9 feet, and at 6 feet from 

 the ground 7 feet 5 inches, and contains 120 cubic 

 feet of evidently hard close-grained timber of fine 

 quality. The tree, though now 143 years old, is still 

 quite healthy and growing. The other two trees, its 

 original companions, were blown down by a gale in 

 1829. 



In Eoxburghshire, at Weens, Wolflee, and Minto 



House, there are large and well-grown larches of excel- 







