THE MAPLE 139 



few other stragglers, still show the line of march ; and 

 perhaps our own Maple is a relic of the same tim*e, 

 which has survived the cold, and in our autumn 

 woodlands still surprises us with an exotic wealth 

 of colour. 



Some of its congeners are large trees ; but the 

 Maple is seldom more than ten to twenty feet high. 

 In sheltered situations, however, it considerably ex- 

 ceeds these dimensions, trees of twenty years of age 

 being recorded as reaching thirty-four feet in height. 

 One at Farnham Castle, in Surrey, is recorded by 

 Loudon, in 1835, as being thirty feet high at fifty 

 years of age ; one at Finborough Hall, Sufiblk, forty 

 feet at seventy years ; one at Braystock, Essex, as fifty 

 feet at eighty years; and one growing in a stony 

 clay at Melbury Park, Dorset, a hundred years of 

 age and only thirty-eight feet in height, having, 

 however, a trunk two feet nine inches in diameter 

 whilst that of its head was thirty-seven feet. The 

 finest recorded Maple, however, is probably that at 

 Blairlogie in Stirlingshire growing in an exposed 

 situation in light loam on dry gravel, which at the 

 age of three hundred and two years had reached a 

 height of fifty-five feet, with a diameter of four feet, 

 and a head forty-three feet across. 



The branches of the Maple spread somewhat hori- 

 zontally ; and, when growing apart from other trees, it 

 acquires a compact rounded head, not unlike that of 

 many Sycamores. The bark of the young branches is 

 smooth, but early becomes brown, rough, and corky, 

 splitting in longitudinal furrows, and affording a 

 pleasing contrast to the crimson stalks of the young 



