388 THE THORN. 
when he wrote thirty years ago, the two largest belong to 
Scotland. At that time he records one 110 years old at 
Tyningham in Haddingtonshire, forty-six feet high, with a 
trunk three feet in diameter, and a head forty-seven feet, 
standing on light loam or clay. Another is recorded to stand 
at Duddingstone near Edinburgh, of similar dimensions. 
The tree also attains an unusual height farther north. At 
Gordon Castle in Banffshire, in Morayshire, and on the shel- 
tered slopes of Badenoch in Inverness-shire, instances are found 
of its approaching the height of forty feet, and yet in full vigour. 
The hawthorn is a tree of great duration, and has been 
known to exist for several centuries. 
The timber of the tree is very hard, and of a creamy-white 
colour. It is not much used in the arts, owing to the difficulty 
of getting it of a large size. It takes a very fine polish, and 
is esteemed in turnery for knobs and handles to small imple- 
ments, for mallets, teeth to rakes, and all purposes where 
hardness and durability are required. 
The following are the leading varieties of the hawthorn, 
and are propagated by grafting or budding, using the common 
tree as the stock :—Double blossom white, a well-known tree, 
the fading flowers of which change to a delicate pink. Double 
red. Single and double scarlet—all the blossoms of these are 
of great beauty. 
C. 0. aurea is a variety which yields yellow haws, not com- 
mon, but very ornamental. 
C. 0. precow, the early flowering or Glastonbury thorn, is 
remarkable for coming into leaf in winter, and in favourable 
weather instances are recorded of its having blossomed freely 
in England at Christmas. In the north of Scotland I have 
seen it covered with foliage in the end of January and early 
in February, but the severe frosts every year rendered the 
tree very unhealthy. I have not known it to be tried on the 
west coast of Scotland, but I believe that under the influence 
of the Gulf-stream, where the winters are mild, the tree would 
find a congenial atmosphere. 
Of the genus there are upwards of thirty species found in 
the collections of this very ornamental dwarf tree. 
