the first year. I have found that this is a very successful method to adopt with all small trees on stony soil liable to drought.
An account of the best way of growing the Scots pine from seed was written by the Earl of Haddington in 1760 to his grandson, and is quoted in the Highland and Agricultural Society's volume on the Old and Remarkable Trees of Scotland, published in 1864. This account is very practical and based on personal experience, and interesting as showing how much care was taken by the planters of those days to ensure good results.
Remarkable Trees
As to the height the Scots pine attains in Great Britain, many particulars have been given by Loudon, which in most cases cannot be relied on for accuracy, but we have reliable measurements which show that the tree rarely exceeds 110 feet, and more usually is not over 100 feet.
In the Victoria County History of Hants, it is stated in vol. ii. p. 469, that trees 130 feet high were growing at Beaulieu, but Lord Montagu tells me that he has never actually measured one over 116 feet, of which height one was blown down some years ago. I saw these trees in June 1906, and though many exceed 100 feet, and are clean to 70 or 80 feet, with a girth of about 7 feet, I could find none over 110 feet. At Rooksbury Park, near Wickham, Hants, there are some which, I think, are taller, growing, mixed with beech and oak, in a dense thicket of rhododendron. The largest I measured here was about 115 feet by 10 feet 4 inches, dividing at about 17 feet into three tall, clean stems.
At Carclew, Cornwall, the seat of Colonel Tremayne, there is a fine avenue of pines, the tallest of which I found to be about 110 feet (Plate 160). At Pain's Hill, Surrey, Henry measured a tree of 106 feet. In the Belvidere plantation in Windsor Park, one of the finest old pine woods in England, planted about 1760, there are many trees of 100 feet and some perhaps a little more. There were some very tall trees at Hursley Park, Hants, of which I have no exact measurement, but I hear that few, if any, of them remain.
At Blickling Hall, Norfolk, the property of the Marchioness of Lothian, there is an immense tree, perhaps one of the oldest in England, which, when described by Grigor in 1841,[1] was 70 feet high and 16 feet in girth at 6 feet from the ground. He thought it the largest tree of the kind in Norfolk. When I saw it in April 1907 it was 96 feet by 17 feet 1 inch, dividing at about 10 feet into two main trunks, which were chained together 40 feet up. It had a large burr at the base. At Stratton Strawless there are some fine trees planted about 1740 by Robert Marsham, measuring about 100 feet by 9 feet. A tree was reported by Loudon at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, as being 120 feet high, with a bole roo feet long, but I could not identify this tree as still living in 1905. At Cocklode House, in Sherwood Forest, there is a fine avenue of Scots pines about 160 years old, which are 90 to 100 feet high, and 9 to Io feet in girth, but many of them have been blown down.
The tallest that I have ever seen or heard of is in the grounds at Petworth,
- ↑ The Eastern Arboretum, p. 100.
