26 LIRIODENDRON TULIP1FERA. 
The period at which the tulip-tree was iirst introduced into England is uncer- 
tain. The honour is said to have been conferred on the Earl of Noifolk, as far 
back as 1663. It is certain that it was cultivated by Dr. Henry Compton, at 
Fulham, in 1688, at which time it was wholly unknown as a timber-tree. Ac- 
cording to Miller, Mr. Darley, at Hoxton, and Mr. Fairchild, were the first who 
raised this tree from seeds ; and from their nurseries it is probable that the 
numerous old trees which are spread all over Britain were procured. The old- 
est tree in England, estimated at over one hundred and fifty years of age, is at 
Fulham palace. It is about fifty feet high, and its trunk, at one foot from the 
ground, is three feet in diameter. The largest tree in Britain is in Somersetshire, 
at Hestercombe, which is one hundred feet in height, with a trunk three feet in 
diameter, and ripens seeds every year. 
The first notice which we have of the tulip-tree on the continent, is in the 
"Catalogue of the Leyden Garden," published in 1731. From the number of 
these trees existing in France, the south of Germany, and Italy, there can be 
little doubt it spread as rapidly in those countries as it did in Britain. Public 
avenues are planted of it in Italy, and as far north as Strasburg and Mentz. It 
stands the open air at Vienna, and attains a large size there ; but it will not 
endure the climate north of Warsaw, nor Moscow, without protection. In the 
grounds of the palace of Lacken, near Brussels, there is a tree which has a clear 
stem three feet in diameter, with a compact globular head. When Lacken 
belonged to France, the palace was occupied by the Empress Josephine, who 
brought her gardener from Paris ; and the poor man, while he was gathering 
seeds from this tree, fell from it, and broke his neck. At Schwobber, near Han- 
over, there is growing, in alluvial soil, near water, a tree more than one hundred 
and twenty years old, and eighty feet in height, with a trunk two feet in diam- 
eter, and an ambitus of thirty feet. In Italy, the tulip-tree attains a height of 
seventy or eighty feet, flowers freely, and ripens seeds every year. 
The elder Michaux measured a tulip-tree, three and a half miles from Louis- 
ville, Kentucky, which was twenty-two feet and a half in circumference five feet 
from the ground, and from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty 
feet in height. In 1842, there was felled from the estate of Mr. John Lewis, in 
Llangollan, Kentucky, a tulip-tree, eight feet in diameter, near the ground, and 
five feet in diameter seventy-five feet above. The trunk was perfectly straight 
and sound, and was sawed into boards of common lengths. 
At Green Point, Bushwick, near New York, on the estate of Mr. N. Bliss, 
there is a tulip-tree which has a circumference of twenty-one feet at three feet 
above the ground, and a height of seventy feet. 
In 1807, there existed a tulip-tree, in Hamilton, Adams county, Pennsylvania, 
noticed by John Pearson, in a communication to Dr. James Mease, in the 
" Memoirs of the Philadelphia Society for promoting Agriculture," for that year, 
which had a circumference of thirty-six feet, with a trunk thirty or forty feet to 
the forks, a large head, and, to all appearances, perfectly sound. In the same 
work, he mentions another tree as growing near the Virginia head of the river 
Roanoke, which was thirty-nine feet in circumference four feet from the ground, 
apparently sound, and about forty feet to the forks. 
Soil and Situation. The Liriodendron tulipifera, in its natural habitat, delights 
only in deep, loamy, and extremely fertile soils, such as are found in the rich 
bottoms, lying along the rivers, and on the borders of the great swamps which 
are enclosed in the forests. Like almost all other trees, however, it will grow on 
soils of different qualities, and have its timber and other properties affected by the 
circumstances in which it is placed. But, according to M. Du Hamel, it neither 
thrives in France on a dry, arid, gravelly soil, nor on one with a subsoil of clay, 
or marl. The most rapid-growing young tulip-trees in England, it is said, were 
