66 



SYLVA BRITANNICA. 



year, amidst shades with which he was almost 

 coeval, and which in freshness and tranquilHty 

 afforded the most soothing emblems of his own 

 green and venerable old age. 



THE TUTBURY WYCH-ELM. 



The Wych-Elm, or Wych Hazel, as it is some- 

 times called, from the resemblance that its leaves 

 and young shoots bear to those of the Hazel, is a 

 species of the Elm, which is valuable rather for the 

 quantity of its timber than the quality of it. Since 

 the long bow, for the making of which it was much 

 esteemed in former times, has fallen entirely into 

 disuse, its value is proportionably lessened. It is, 

 however, a noble spreading tree, and grows oc- 

 casionally to a prodigious size, as may be seen 

 by Evelyn's account of one in Sir Walter Bagot's 

 park, in the county of Stafford, " which," says he, 

 " after two men had been five days felling, lay 

 forty yards in length, and was, at the stool, seven- 

 teen feet diameter. It broke in the fall four- 

 teen load of wood, forty-eight in the top ; yielded 

 eight pair of panes, eight thousand six hundred and 

 sixty feet of boards and planks ; the whole es- 

 teemed ninety-seven tons. This was certainly a 

 goodly stick." The Tutbury Wych-Elm is thus 

 mentioned by Shaw, in his history of Stafford- 



