ELM TREE. 



131 



in its stead. Some Elms at Fulham were planted in the 

 time of Edward the Sixth, and one at Richmond is said 

 to have been planted by a courtier of King Henry the 

 Seventh, when he kept his court there : this last is still 

 in its prime. 



One of Sir Francis Bacon's trees in Gray's-Inn Walks, 

 planted in 1600, was felled, upon a suspected decay, in 

 1720 or 1726, and was then above twelve feet round. 



Mr. Coxe, in his account of Monmouthshire, mentions 

 an ancient Elm at Raglan Castle, twenty-eight feet five 

 inches in circumference near the root. Some of the finest 

 trees of the kind are said to grow in the Vale of Glouces- 

 ter ; and the finest Elm in the vale stands in the road 

 between Cheltenham and Tewksbury, very near to the 

 Boddington Oak. It is known by the name of PifFe's 

 Elm, and the toll-gate is called PifFe's Elm Pike. The 

 smallest girth of this tree, which is about five feet from 

 the ground, was in 1783 exactly sixteen feet. At ten 

 feet it threw out large branches, which were formerly 

 lopped, but were then furnished with branches seventy or 

 eighty feet high, and of proportionable extent*. 



It is to be hoped that something will be done, before it 

 be too late, to prevent the threatened destruction of the 

 fine Elm-trees in St. James's Park-f*. 



* See Martyn's edition of Miller's Dictionary. 



t An examination having lately been made into the state of the 

 Elm-trees in St. James's and Hyde Parks, by desire of the Ranger, 

 Lord Sidney, they were discovered by Mr. Macleay ^who made the 

 examination) to be infested by a species of beetle which had already 

 done considerable mischief, and threatened their entire destruction. 



The Elm-trees in both the parks," says Mr. Macleay, " and 

 particularly in St. James's, are rapidly disappearing ; and unless 

 decisive measures be soon taken to resist the progress of the conta- 

 gion, we must not only expect every tree of this species to be 



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