BBO AD-LEAVED ELM. 17 



1703, equal to a moderate tree, yet, when felled, contained 

 eight loads of timber ; and being too bulky for a carriage, 

 was sawn off at seven feet above the butt, where it measured 

 near eight feet in diameter.* This elm I mention, to show 

 to what a bulk planted elms may attain ; as this tree must 

 certainly have been such, from its situation.f In the centre 

 of the village, and near the church, is a square piece of 

 ground, surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called the 

 Plestor.J In the midst of this spot stood, in olden times, a 



* The dimensions here alluded to are insignificant, when compared with 

 those of a wych elm recorded by Mr. Evelyn, growing in Sir Walter Bagot's 

 park, in the county of Stafford, which, after two men had been five days 

 felling, lay 40 yards in length, and was at the stool 17 feet diameter. It broke 

 in the fall, 14 loads of wood : 48 in the top : yielding 8 pair of naves, 8660 

 feet of boards and planks ; it cost \QL 17 s. the sawing. The whole esteemed 

 97 tons. EVELYN'S Sylva, ii. 189. 



Pitte's elm, in the Vale of Gloucester, was, in 1783, about 80 feet high, and 

 the smallest girth of the principal trunk was 16 feet. W. J. 



Dr. Plot mentions an elm growing on Blechington Green, which gave recep- 

 tion and harbour to a poor great-bellied woman, whom the inhospitable people 

 would not receive into their houses, who was brought to bed in it of a son, now 

 a lusty young fellow. PLOT'S Oxfordshire. W. J. 



*t* One of the largest wych elms in England is now growing and flourishing 

 in the grounds of Mr. and Lady Charlotte Penrhyn, at Sheen, Surrey. Two 

 hundred persons lately sat down to a dejeuner under the shade of its spreading 

 branches. ED. 



Our largest trees are quite insignificant when compared with one our present 

 excellent bishop of New Zealand discovered in one of the Tonga Islands, a 

 part of his diocese. In a letter to his father he mentions, that having measured 

 it, he found it 23 fathoms, or 138 feet in circumference ! Humboldt, in his 

 very interesting work, " Views of Nature," has a chapter on the age and size 

 of trees, in which he mentions the pine tree, " Taxodium distichon," as 

 measuring above 40 feet in diameter. See Bohn's edition, p. 274. Other 

 remarkable examples will be found in Loudon's Arboretum. ED. 



J Sir W. Jardine gives the following explanation of the Plestor, in the 

 Antiquities of Selborne. It appears to have been left as a sort of redeeming 

 offering by Sir Adam Gordon, in olden times an inhabitant of Selborne, well 

 known in English history during the reign of Henry III., particularly as a 

 leader of the Mountfort faction. Mr. White says : " As Sir Adam began to 

 advance in years, he found his mind influenced by the prevailing opinion of the 

 reasonableness and efficacy of prayers for the dead ; and, therefore, in conjunc- 

 tion with his wife Constantia, in the year 1271, granted to the prior and 

 convent of Selborne all his right and claim to a certain place, placea, called 

 La Pleystow, in the village aforesaid, ' in liberam, puram, et perpetuam 

 elemosinam,' (for free charitable purposes). This pleystow, locus ludorum, 

 or play-place, is in a level area near the church, of about 44 yards by 36, and 

 is known now by the name of Pkstor. It continues still, as it was in olf* 



C 



