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in height, they measure from 14 feet to 16 feet in girth, the largest being estimated by Mr. A.T. Gillanders, forester to the Duke of Northumberland, to contain about 600 cubic feet each.

At Rydal Park, Cumberland, Mr. W.F. Rawnsley informs me that a silver fir was felled which contained 420 cubic feet, and doubtless there are others in the north-west of England as large.’

In Wales, however, I have seen none remarkable for size, though there are many places which seem as suitable as those ] have mentioned.

In Scotland the silver fir attains its maximum of size in the south-west, and in a district where the climate is most unlike that of central Europe; being much warmer in winter, cooler in summer, and with a rainfall of 60 to 80 inches and even more in exceptional years.

On the Duke of Argyll’s property at Roseneath are the champion silver firs of Great Britain, both as regards age and girth. Strutt figures them in Silva Scotica (plate 6), and states that the largest was then about 90 feet by 17 feet 5 inches. Loudon, twenty years later, gave the height as 124 feet, the age as 138 years, and the diameter of the trunk as 6 feet; but this height is almost certainly an error, as when I visited Roseneath in September 1906, a careful measurement made the largest about 110 feet by 22 feet 7 inches, and the other, which stands close by it, 105 feet by 22 feet 1 inch.” Plate 210, from a negative for which I have to thank Mr. Renwick, is the best I have been able to obtain of these noble trees, which grow close to sea-level in deep sandy soil. The Duke of Argyll believes them to have been planted about 1620 or 1630.

Near Inveraray Castle, on the lower slopes of Dun-y-Cuagh, Mr. D. Campbell, the Duke’s forester, showed me some splendid silver firs, over 120 feet high and 15 feet in girth, and assured me that in his younger days he had helped to measure some which were much larger; one he believed to have been 24 feet in girth, containing over 800 feet of timber. On the Dalmally road, a little above the stables at Inveraray, are the tallest trees of the species that I have seen in Scotland ; one measures 135 feet, or perhaps as much as 140 feet, by 16½ feet; another about 135 feet by 14 feet 3 inches; and there may be even taller ones here which I could not measure. These splendid trees were, as the Duke of Argyll informs me, probably planted by Duke Archibald in 1750, but their timber is so coarse that it is of little value, and is principally used by Glasgow shipbuilders for keel blocks.

Some of the most remarkable silver firs which I have seen in any country are at Ardkinglas, now the property of Sir Andrew Noble, near the head of Loch Fyne. They are described by J. Wilkie, and well illustrated in the Trans. Scot. Arb. Soc. ix. 174, and show a tendency, which I cannot explain, to throw out immense branches, which, after growing horizontally 10 to 15 feet from the main trunk, turn up and form an erect secondary stem. The largest of these (oo. cit. plate 11), accord- ing to Wilkie’s careful measurement in 1881, was 114 feet high by 18 feet in girth at

1 Sir Richard Graham of Netherby Hall, Cumberland, showed me a very remarkable tree in a wood called Hog Knowe, which has large spreading branches, 80 paces in circumference, and measures 98 feet by 14½ feet. Mr. Watt of Carlisle has been good enough to send me a photograph of this tree, taken by his sister.

2 See Gard. Chron. xxii. 8, fig. 1 (1884), and xxvii. 166, fig. 39 (1887), where good illustrations of these trees are given.