480 OBSERVATIONS ON 



SIZE AND GROWTH. 



MR. MARSH AM of Stratton, near Norwich, informs me 

 by letter thus : " I became a planter early ; so that an 

 oak which I planted in 1720 is become now, at one foot 

 from the earth, twelve feet six inches in circumference, 

 and at fourteen feet (the half of the timber length) is 

 eight feet two inches. So if the bark was to be mea- 

 sured as timber, the tree gives one hundred and sixteen 

 and a half feet, buyer's measure. Perhaps you never 

 heard of a larger oak while the planter was living. I 

 flatter myself that I increased the growth by washing 

 the stem, and digging a circle as far as I supposed the 

 roots to extend, and by spreading sawdust, &c. as re- 

 lated in the Philosophical Transactions. I wish I had 

 begun with beeches, (my favourite trees as well as 

 yours), I might then have seen very large trees of iny 

 own raising. But I did not begin with beech till 1741, 

 and then by seed ; so that my largest is now, at five 

 feet from the ground, six feet three inches in girth, and 

 with its head spreads a circle of twenty yards diameter. 

 This tree was also dug round, washed, &c." Stratton, 

 24 July, 1790 *. 



1 Robert Marsham, of Stratton Strawless, a country gentleman of similar 

 tastes in many respects with Gilbert White, commenced his observations 

 on some of the proceedings of nature at an earlier period than our his- 

 torian, and continued them to a later date. A register of the indications 

 of spring, published by him in the Philosophical Transactions, begins in 

 1736, and is continued for more than half a century. His latest paper in 

 that valuable collection, is devoted to an account of the measurements of 

 trees, being supplemental to a communication made by him nearly forty 

 years before. It contains, among others, the girth of the oak planted by 

 himself in 1720: a singular instance of longevity combined with perse- 

 verance in the same pursuit. Few are the men who live to measure trees 

 planted by themselves seventy-seven years previously ! 



It was at the hospitable seat of his "very worthy and ingenious friend, 

 Robert Marsham," that Stillingfleet prepared his Calendar of Flora for 

 1755, which has been already referred to. He thus speaks of its situa- 

 tion : " All the country about is a dead flat ; on one side is a barren black 

 heath ; on the other a light sandy loam ; partly tilled, partly pasture land 

 sheltered with fine groves." E. T. B. 



