476 



NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS. 



and on the road between Cheltenham and Tewkesbury, within a few 

 hundred yards of the site of the great Boddington Oak, ah-eady men- 

 tioned. It is known by the name of " Piffe's Ehn and the turnpike 

 gate, the fence of which is fastened at one end to the tree, takes it name 

 from it. When Marshall saw this Elm in 1783, its smallest girth was 

 sixteen at five feet from the ground, and the height might be eighty or 

 ninety feet. At ten feet above the ground it formerly threw out large 

 arms, which had been lopped ; but they were then replaced by monstrous 

 shoots, rising probably to seventy or eighty feet high, with a proportion- 

 able extent of top ; and exhibiting altogether, as he says, " one of the 

 grandest trees he had seen." This, however, was not so much from its 

 actual magnitude at the time, as from the fulness of growth, and the 

 promise which it gave of rapid progression. 



At present, in 1824, after an interval of forty-one years, it mea- 

 sures (as I learn from a friend near the spot) thirty feet in girth, at 

 two feet and a half from the ground. And my reason for noticing 

 it in this place, is the same as that given by Marshall — namely, that 

 by recording its increase from time to time, posterity may be enabled 

 to estimate the rapid progress of what in all likelihood, in such a soil 

 and climate, will become among the greatest trees that England has to 

 boast of. — See Rur. Ornam. vol. ii. p. 430. There is an English Elm 

 in Hyde Park, one of a very fine row, probably planted when Le Notre 

 laid out the park, in Charles the Second's time, of which the stem is 

 considerably larger than PifFe's Elm ; but it has been long hollow ; 

 and both the head and the stem show visible signs of decay. 



Note VII. Page 8l7. 



See Profitahle Planter, p. 110. It appears that this species — ^namely 

 the upright or erect Elm — is not a new variety, as it was known to Han- 

 bury, and is described by him under his seventh head. — See Body of 

 Planting, vol. i. p. 200. 



Note VIII. Page 821. 



For a long time the Beech, in many parts of England, was scarcely 

 considered as a "timber tree.'' — Before Bradley's time, particularly in 

 Hertfordshire, as he informs us, it was absolutely denied a place among 

 that privileged number. But a remarkable trial, before the Barons of 

 Exchequer, about 1725, between a certain landowner and a clergyman 

 respecting tithes, established the right in favour of the Beech, by satis- 

 factory proving its timber uses in mill-work, keels of vessels, house 



