362 



Domestic Notices : — Scotland. 



are under an everlasting debt to Mr. Hume for the exertions whicii he is con- 

 tinually making in their favour ; and if he could once get the principle recog- 

 nised, of the usefulness of admitting the public to all kinds of exhibitions at 

 proper hours on Sundays, he would, in our opinion, do the greatest good, 

 next to that of establishing a system of national education in the manner of 

 some of the Continental systems, by which it would be impossible for any 

 person to grow up in this country without being educated more or less in 

 every branch of useful knowledge. Of some such system Mr. Hume has been 

 for many years an advocate. We most sincerely hope that Mr. Hume's ad- 

 dress may be attended with the desired result ; and that the queen's advisers 

 will show that they are not without sympathy for the great mass of their 

 fellow-creatures. — Cond. 



SCOTLAND. 



Queen Mary's Tree. — This memorable tree, which has braved the blast of 

 centuries, yielded to the fury of the gale on Monday last. It stood at the 

 east end of the village of Duddingstone, and nearly opposite Lord Abercorn's 

 park. It was, perhaps, one of the oldest thorn trees in Scotland, and of the 

 largest dimensions. Its exact measurement we do not at present recollect. 



^£r^-ms,ii^sMii 



but we know that two men embracing its trunk at opposite sides could not 

 make their hands meet. It was commonly called Queen Mary's Tree, though, 

 it is probable, it was planted before her reign. It formerly stood within a 

 park, but on widening the carriage road about ten or twelve years ago, it was 

 brought outside ; and then it seemed on its last legs, several fissures appearing 

 in the trunk, through which the elements of air and water were fast consuming 

 the venerable tree. The road trustees had these fissures filled up with stone 

 and lime, and had it otherwise protected ; but the violence of the gale on 

 Monday pulled it up by the roots, laying it along, a shattered and withered 

 trunk ; and thus another of the memorials of the unfortunate Mary has 

 perished in the vicinity of her Holyrood. (Times, June, 1840, from an Aber- 

 deen paper.) The thorn tree above mentioned was measured by Sir Thomas 

 Dick Lauder in 1818, and again in 1836 by Mr. Barnet, then curator of the 



