42 FAMILIAR TREES 



The Scots Fir is much planted on sandy soil in 

 hilly situations throughout England, since it will 

 flourish in many instances where the more rapid- 

 growing Larch will not. This is the case, for example, 

 with the Bagshot Sand area of North and West Surrey, 

 and with the Lower Greensand wastes of the middle 

 of that county, and of Bedfordshire. An anecdote 

 of the seventeenth century may possibly point to the 

 indigenous character of this species as far south as 

 Staffordshire. At Warton, in that county, there were 

 then thirty-six very large Firs, several reaching 120 

 feet in height, and one even exceeding 140 feet, and 

 having a girth of nearly 15 feet. The tenants who 

 for many generations held the farm on which these 

 trees stood, bore the name of Firchild, an ancestor 

 having been found under one of the trees. 



Accustomed as we are to the short, much 

 branched stems of our deciduous or hardwood trees, 

 the Pine is to us the very type of lofty uprightness. 

 Its straight stem, seldom exceeding twelve feet in 

 girth, attains a height of from 'fifty to 100 feet, 

 and is of such a bulk as to render its branches com- 

 paratively insignificant ; but most of us who remember 

 such from our earliest years will echo Hood's reminis- 

 cence of their impressive grandeur : 



" I remember, I remember 



The Fir-trees dark and high; 

 I used to think their slender tops 



Were close against the sky. 

 It was a childish ignorance ; 



But now 'tis little joy- 

 To know I'm further off from heaven 



Than when I was a boy." 



