482 OBSERVATIONS ON 



feet from the ground, measures in circumference thirty- 

 four feet. It has in old times lost several of its boughs, 

 and is tending to decay. Mr. Marsham computes, that 

 at fourteen feet length this oak contains one thousand 

 feet of timber 3 . 



It has been the received opinion that trees grow in 

 height only by their annual upper shoot. But my neigh- 

 bour over the way, whose occupation confines him to 

 one spot, assures me that trees are expanded and raised 

 in the lower parts also. The reason that he gives is 

 this: the point of one of my. firs began for the first time 

 to peer over an opposite roof at the beginning of sum- 

 mer ; but before the growing season was over, the whole 

 shoot of the year, and three or four joints of the body 

 beside, became visible to him as he sits on his form in 

 his shop 4 . According to this supposition, a tree may 



earlier, and in their more mature years. The greatest beech which I 

 observed in 1835, in the park-like enclosure at the back of Gilbert White's 

 house at Selborne, measured ten feet in circumference at about one foot 

 from the ground: the largest ash in the same enclosure, nine feet: and a 

 fine fir, which the author was wont to speak of as his eldest son, and 

 which is perhaps the great fir alluded to above, measured eight feet 

 in circumference. If, however, the great fir be the same with Gilbert 

 White's eldest son, its growth during the last forty-five years has been 

 slow as compared with that which took place in the forty earlier years 

 of its existence. E. T. B. 



3 There are in the Holt two great oaks ; one known as the Grindstone, 

 and the other as the Buck's Horn. The former, I apprehend, is the one 

 measured by Mr. Marsham. At about five feet from the ground its cir- 

 cumference is fully thirty-six feet. It is now a ruin merely, and desti- 

 tute altogether of life : a massive ruin, however, which will resist, through 

 generations yet to come, the utmost force of the elements. Its singularly 

 formed and gigantic vertical branch will probably be severed, before 

 many years are past, from the stupendous trunk : but the trunk itself 

 will endure. The care which has been judiciously taken to preserve it 

 from wanton or thoughtless, injury, is highly praiseworthy : both it and 

 the Buck's Horn are surrounded by a fence and hedge. 



The Buck's Horn oak is of a very different form from the Grindstone. 

 It is not yet entirely dead. A figure of it, from a sketch taken at the 

 same time with that from which the above drawing was made, will be 

 given in the work entitled Selborne and its Vicinity, to which I have 

 already had occasion to refer for the further illustration of much of the 

 local scenery. E. T. B. 



4 Mr. White is innocent of this observation, and merely relates the 



