104 FAMILIAR TREES 



in France and Germany. This has been owing in 

 great measure to its rapid growth during early 

 youth and its supposed immunity from insect and 

 fungoid attacks. 



Probably the most interesting specimen of the 

 Douglas Fir in England is that in the celebrated 

 pinetum at Dropmore, close to Burnham Beeches, 

 Buckinghamshire. It was raised from some of the 

 first seed brought home by Douglas, in December, 

 1827. It bore its first cone in 1835, when only 

 eight years old, and in 1837 it was nineteen feet high. 

 In 1871, i.e. at forty-four years of age, it was 100 feet 

 high and nine feet seven inches in girth at three feet 

 from the ground, and in 1897 it was 108 feet high, 

 giving an average growth in height of twenty-five and 

 a half inches a year for fifty-one years, a rate probably 

 unprecedented in this country. Such specimens, in 

 favourable soil and with full room to develop, are 

 believed to have laid on a mean annual increment 

 of wood of as much as three cubic feet, as against one 

 cubic foot as the most that could be anticipated from 

 a Larch. It is an interesting fact that the finest 

 specimens in Scotland are growing close to the 

 birthplace of Menzies, the discoverer, and Douglas, 

 the introducer of the species, viz. at Castle Menzies, 

 Murthly Castle, Scone, and Taymount, all in Perthshire. 





TRANSVERSE SECTION OF NEEDLE LEAF Or DOUGLAS FIR. 



