SECTION XIII. 



473 



head of that ancient name. It grows in deep loam, in rather a sheltered 

 situation, by favour of the old house and tower, and is still in high 

 vigour of health. 



This grand tree is between eighty and ninety feet high. It measures 

 twelve feet nine inches in girth at four feet from the ground, and 

 ascends with a straight and lofty stem to the height of nearly thirty 

 feet, without a branch. After this it divides into six great arms or 

 limbs, forming a most superb and umbrageous top, and covering with 

 its shade a large space of ground. The beautiful intertwisting of its pen- 

 dulous branches and spray, so strikingly in the style of vine' tendrils, 

 is on an immense scale ; as those light and floating masses appear clus- 

 tering below the general line of the top, for eighteen and twenty feet 

 down, of course not far from the ground. It is not easy to figure an 

 object where so much grandeur is united with so much lightness and 

 elegance of form. Were it not that this singular tree is a very shy 

 bearer of seed, plants would long since have been raised from it. I 

 entertain no doubt of its age being referable to a period as far back as 

 the time when the Setons first obtained the place — that is, before the 

 middle of the fifteenth century, and in the reign of King James II. 



Note IV. Page 99. 



The Elm is placed, by the Linnsean arrangement, in class and oi der, 

 Pentandria digynia. The first or indigenous species is supposed by 

 some to be the OpLTrrekea of Theophrastus : but it is not easy to give 

 botanical descriptions, corresponding to the practical and plain classi- 

 fication which has been adopted in the text. Those who follow Lin- 

 nsaeus, such as Dr Hunter and others, describe the common or indigenous 

 British Elm as uhnus vulgatissima ml montana^ folio lato scahro, and all 

 the other kinds as varieties. Miller and some other writers describe 

 the broad and the narrow, the smooth and the rough leaved, as distinct 

 species. Late botanists, however, make only two kinds ; first, what 

 they call the common Elm, U, campestris, or rough-leaved Witch Elm ; 

 secondly, the Witch Hazel, U. montana, or very broad-leaved Elm ; 

 and the fine narrow-leaved or English Elm — U. minm\ folio augusto 

 scahro — only a variety of the first. In this way, they describe the 

 Ulma campestrisy as Foliis duplicato serratis scabris, hasi incequalihus, 

 florihus, suhsessilibus congestis ; and the U. montana, as Foliis duplicato 

 serratis acuminatisy hasi incequalihtis, fiorihus pedunculatis effusis. See 

 Smith, Flor. Britan. tom. i. pp. 281, 282. To me, I must confess, that 

 by far the most intelligible account of the different species of this tree 

 is to be found in Miller's Dictionary, edit. 1759, et seq. ; an account 



