This tree has suffered to some extent from an attack of Chermes, with which the trunk was covered in 1903, but when I last saw it this had mostly disappeared. Lord Ducie had the tree accurately measured by a man climbing it in May 1908, and informs me that it was then 103 feet 9 inches high, by 9 feet 11 inches in girth. It was planted in 1854, and was 7 feet high in 1855 and 23 feet in 1864.
At Highnam Court, Gloucestershire, there is also a fine specimen in the pinetum, measuring 75 feet by 8 feet, but the trees here seem, as they do in many other places, to have nearly exhausted the soil they grow in, and are beginning to go off. At Miserden Park, the seat of A. Leatham, Esq., in the same county, there is an avenue of grafted trees on dry oolite soil, which were so laden with cones in the year 1900 that they have suffered much in consequence, though hitherto they have borne the exposed situation well.
At Chatsworth Mr. Robertson has measured a tree 85 feet by 8 feet 5 inches with a fine clean stem containing 195 cubic feet. At Walcot, the seat of the Earl of Powis, in Shropshire, I measured in 1906 very fine glaucous specimen which, though grafted, was 86 feet by 10 feet 9 inches. At Beauport, Sussex, there is a tree, also grafted, 86 feet by 8 feet 1 inch in 1905. At Linton, Kent, there is a tree 90 feet by 8 feet 6 inches in 1902. At Barton there is a tree 80 feet by 7 feet, sheltered in a high wood, and growing fast.
In Fulmodestone Wood, on the Earl of Leicester's property, there is a tree 74 feet by 9 feet 6 inches, from which a self-sown seedling has sprung up, which at eleven to twelve years old was, in 1903, 3 feet 6 inches high; another self-sown seedling in the same place was 20 feet high at about 23 to 25 years old.
At Sandringham there are two fine trees in a shrubbery near York House, the largest of which, in October 1907, measured 85 to go feet by 8 feet 10 inches.
At Twizell, Northumberland, once the property of Selby, the author of British Forest Trees, I saw in 1906 a tree 80 feet by 8 feet, the top of which, however, was damaged by wind.
In Wales it seems to thrive well both at Penrhyn and Hafodunos, in the north; and at Dinas Mawddwy in Merionethshire, where in 1906 I measured a very flourishing tree 75 feet by 5 feet 8 inches.
In Scotland[1] it generally succeeds better than in England, and where it has sufficient shelter seems likely to attain a great size and age. By far the finest that I have seen, are some trees growing at the foot of a sheltered bank on deep sandy soil, in the Dolphin walk at Murthly, four of which certainly exceed 100 feet in height, and the tallest was, as nearly as I could measure it, from 105 feet to 110 feet by 7 feet 11 inches in September 1906.
A tree growing at Ballindalloch Castle, Banffshire, the seat of Sir J. Macpherson-Grant, is said to be the finest in the north of Scotland, and is stated to have measured in August 1907, 94 feet by 9 feet 11½ inches, and to be only forty-seven years planted.[1]
The next largest we have seen is at Keir,[2] Perthshire, which was, in 1905, 99
