BEOAD-LEATED ELM. ' 17 



1703, equal to a moderate tree, yet, when felled, contained 

 eight loads of timber ; and being too bulky for a carriage, 

 was sawn oif at seven feet above the butt, where it measured 

 near eight feet in diameter.* This elm I mention, to show 

 to what a bulk planted ehns may attain ; as this tree must 

 certainly have been such, from its situation.! In the centre 

 of the village, and near the church, is a square piece of 

 ground, surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called the 

 Plestor. J In the midst of this spot stood, in olden times, a 



* The dimensions here alluded to are insignificant, when compared with 

 Ihose of a wych elm recorded hy Mr. Evelyn, growing in Sir "Walter Bagot's 

 park, in the county of Stafford, which, after two men had heen five days 

 felling, lay 40 yards in length, and was at the stool 17 feet diameter. It bioke 

 in the fall, 14 loads of wood: 48 in the top: yielding 8 pair of naves, 8660 

 feet of boards and plan1<s ; it cost \0l. I7s. the sawing. The whole esteemed 

 97 tons. — Evelyn's Sylva, ii. 189. 



Pitte's elm, in the Tale of Gloucester, was, in 1783, ahout'80 feet high, and 

 the smivUest girth of the principal trunk was 16 feet. — W. J. 



Dr. Plot mentions an elm growing on Blechington Green, which gave recep- 

 tion and harhour to a poor great-bellied woman, whom the inhospitable people 

 would not receive into their houses, who was brought to bed in it of a son, now 

 a lusty young fellow. — Plot's Oxfordshire. — W. J. 



"I" One of the largest wych elms in England is now growing and flourishing 

 in the grounds of Mr. and Lady Charlotte Penrhyn, at Sheen, Surrey. Two 

 hundred persons Lately sat down to a d^e&ner under the shade of its spreading 

 branches. — Ed. 



Our largest trees are quite insignificant when compared with one our present 

 escellent bishop of New Zealand discovered in one of the Tonga Islands, a 

 part of his diocese. In a letter to his father he mentions, that having measured 

 it, he found it 23 fathoms, or 138 feet in circumference ! Humboldt, in his 

 very interesting work, " Views of Nature," has a chjipter on the age and size 

 of trees, in which he mentions the pine tree, " Taxodium distickon" as 

 measuring above 40 feet in diameter. — See Bohn's edition, p. 274. Other 

 remarkable examples will be found in Loudon's Arioreinm. — Ed. 



J Sir W. Jardine gives the following explanation of the Pleator, in the 

 Antiquities of Selborne. It appears to have heen left as a sort of redeeming 

 oifering by Sir Adam Gordon, in olden times an inhabitant of Selborne, well 

 known in English history during the reign of Henry III., particularly as a 

 leader of the Mountfort faction. Mr. White says : — " As Sir Adam began to 

 advance in years, he found his mind influenced by the prevailing opinion of the 

 reasonableness and efficacy of prayers for the dead ; and, thei-efore, in conjunc- 

 tion with his wife Constantia, in the year 1271, granted to the prior and 

 convent of Selborne all his right and claim to a certain place, placea, called 

 La Pleystow, in the village aforesaid, 'in liberam, puram, et perpettuMn 

 elemo^mam,' (for free charitable purposes). This pleystow, locus Vudorum, 

 or play-place, is in a level area nearHhe church, of about 44 yards by 36, and 

 18 known now by the name of Pleitor. It continues still, as it was in ol|J 



c 



