Anniversary Address 55 



Anderson. Here was pointed out a large Horse-Chestnut, said 

 to have been planted by Mungo Park, wbo married an aunt of 

 Dr. Anderson. Whether the great traveller planted the tree or 

 not, it goes by his name, and serves, with his statue close by, to 

 keep alive the memory of his connection with Selkirk, in which 

 parish he was born, and where he served his apprenticeship as a 

 surgeon with Dr. Anderson's grandfather. 



While a few of the party remained at Dovecot to inspect some 

 interesting relics of Mungo Park, others walked on to examine 

 two trees which had been struck by lightning during a severe 

 and prolonged thunder-storm, which passed over the town on 

 Saturday, June 24th. The trees are within the grounds of 

 Knowepark, a villa belonging to Mr Eichard Turnbull, manufac- 

 turer, and close to a low hawthorn hedge separating Knowepark 

 from Parkend, the house of Mr Scott, Eector of the Grammar 

 School. The tree which has been most injured is a Willow, pro- 

 bably Salix RusselUana, overhanging the public road, and at the 

 end of the hedge, which slopes upward to the other tree, an Ash, 

 about 56 feet distant. The rise of the ground between the 

 two trees is 6 or 7 feet, so that although the Willow is 45 feet 

 in height and the Ash only 35, their summits are nearly on a 

 level. The Willow measures 7 feet 6 in. in girth, and at 8^ feet 

 from the ground divides into four principal branches, one of 

 them continuing the trunk upwards, the other three sloping out- 

 wards at various angles. All the branches were injured, but the 

 chief injury was done to the upright one. The leaves on its 

 upper twigs were blackened and destroyed, the wood in several 

 places split to the heart, and great sheets of the bark torn ofiP, 

 and scattered to a considerable distance. At the root under 

 the main branch a large hole was scooped in the ground. But 

 the feature of chief interest is connected with the other tree. 

 This is an Ash of two trunks springing from one root, one of 

 the trunks, 4 ft. 4 in. in girth, touching the hedge. It showed, 

 immediately after the storm, a narrow slit as if cut with a knife 

 on the trunk next the hedge. The cut began at the height of 

 the hedge 3^ feet from the ground, and ran in a straight line for 

 j&ve feet to the point where the first branch projected from the 

 main trunk. There it stopped, and neither on bark nor foliage 

 above, nor on any other part of the tree was there mark of light- 

 ning. It was suggested that while the principal downward force 

 of the lightning had expended itself on the Willow, shattering 



