972. The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



At Beauport, Henry saw one dividing at 5 feet into five stems, and girthing 

 below the fork 1 1 feet. At Arley Castle he measured one 76 feet by 8 feet i inch in 

 1905. At Croome Court there is a tree 'j^ feet high, of which one large stem 

 has been broken off short. Mr. J. Smith mentions ^ a birch growing at Embley 

 Park, Hants, in 1887, which was 85 feet by 6 feet 7 inches, with a bole of 25 feet. 



In Wales the birch, so far as I have seen, does not attain so large a size as in 

 England and Scotland, the finest I know of being at Ogwenbank, near the entrance 

 to the great slate quarry at Penrhyn. This, though only about 50 feet high, spreads 

 over an area 25 paces in diameter, and has two main stems which are 13 feet and 12 

 feet 2 inches in girth respectively. 



In Scotland, Mr. Renwick considers a birch {B. verrucosa) at Auchendrane, in 

 Ayrshire, to be the finest in the west of Scotland. He gives an account of this 

 tree, with a photograph, in Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Glasgow, vii. 262 {1905). It is 67 

 feet in height, with a bole of 13 feet, girthing 10 feet 8 inches; and was planted, 

 according to Miss Cathcart, by her mother in 1818, having been purchased from 

 Booth's nursery near Hamburg as a cut-leaved weeping birch. 



A still larger tree at Newton Don, near Kelso, which was cut down in 1901, 

 measured, in 1893, 8° ^^t high, with a short bole, 13 feet in girth at i foot 7 inches 

 above the ground, and dividing at 3 feet up into two main stems. Captain C. B. 

 Balfour informs us that Jeffrey, in his History of Roxburghshire, describes it in 1859 

 as being then 74 feet high and 14 feet in girth at the base. 



At Monzie there are some tall birches, drawn up by other trees, one measuring 

 90 feet high by 8 feet in girth. At Blair Drummond there are several old birches, 

 all with large boles, some with remarkable burrs, and one with low spreading 

 branches layering. One of these measured 60 feet by 13 feet 10 inches ; and another 

 70 feet high is 10 feet 8 inches in girth. 



In Darnaway Forest there are many fine birch trees on the banks of the 

 Findhorn, one of which was stated by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder to girth 13 feet ; 

 but I am informed by Mr. D. Scott, forester to the Earl of Moray, that many of 

 these have died, and those remaining are fast decaying. The largest measure 9 to 

 10 feet in girth, and many of them contain 70 to 75 cubic feet of timber. The 

 rough twigged birch predominates here, but does not as a rule assume a pendulous 

 habit until it is of some age. 



At Gordon Castle there is a fine tree in the park, which in 1904 was 68 feet by 

 9 feet; and at Murthly, in the drive from Dunkeld, I measured in 1906 a very tall 

 and slender birch {B. verrucosa) which was 89 feet high and only 3 feet 9 inches in 

 girth. 



In the Pass of Killiecrankie and many other Highland glens the birch grows 

 freely mixed with oak on the rocky slopes, and in the wide valley of the Spey there 

 are beautiful open woods of pure birch, covering a large extent of the gravelly 

 flats and terraces which every traveller on the Highland Railway between Kingussie 

 and Grantown must have admired. In the swampy flat at the head of Loch Morlich, 

 in Glenmore, there is an open wood of curiously distorted, twisted, and stunted 



1 Trans. Scot. Arb. Soc. xi. 532 (1887). 



