E.H. Loyd, Esq., in 1880, which at 4 feet from the ground measured 22 feet 4 inches in girth, with a height of 107 feet. At Chart Park, Deepdene, Surrey, a tree 95 feet high is 19 feet 3 inches in girth, and divides at 12 feet up into ten upright stems.
At Chorleywood Cedars, near Rickmansworth, there are seven very fine cedars, standing on high ground, which form a landmark in the country, and are said to measure about 23 feet in girth. Another at the same place was recently struck by lightning, and cut down.
At Beechwood, near Dunstable, the seat of Sir Edgar Sebright, Bt., there are some very fine old cedars, of which the largest, as I am informed by Miss F. Woolward, measures 100 feet by 28 feet 4 inches, with a spread of branches 46 feet across. Another, 90 feet by 23 feet, has branches from 50 to 60 feet long.
At Chiswick House there are a number of very fine cedars still surviving, though not so many as when the late Mr. Barron, Superintendent of the Royal Horticultural Society's Gardens, measured them in 1882. The two largest trees at that time were 16 feet and 18 feet in girth, and when I saw them in 1904 the two largest were 16 feet 5 inches and 18 feet 5 inches. These are supposed to have been planted about 1720, but are nothing like so fine as many trees at a greater distance from London.
One of the most remarkable cedars in England, on account of its habit, stands in what was probably a dense grove of tall silver firs near the site of the old house at Stratton Strawless, the home of Robert Marsham, who planted it when 1} feet high, in 1747. When described by Grigor[1] in 1841 its stem was 44 feet high, free from branches, and 12 feet 2 inches in girth at 6 feet. His plate shows that it has changed but little now. When Mr. Birkbeck showed it to me in April 1907 it was about 80 feet high and 163 feet in girth, and though some branches in the crown had been broken off, it looks remarkably vigorous (Plate 133).
A fine tree of the same type, but not equal to the last mentioned, is in a sheltered part of the grounds at Gosfield Hall, Essex, the property of Mrs. Lowe. It is 80 to go feet high, by 14½ feet in girth, with a clean stem up to about 60 feet, and a flat, spreading crown of branches at the top.
A cedar which is growing at Birchanger Place, near Bishop-Stortford, for a photograph of which I am indebted to the owner, T. Harrison, Esq. (Plate 134), is strikingly different in habit, and of its type is one of the most beautiful and perfectly shaped in England. It is about 60 feet high and 17 feet in girth, the branches covering an area at least 100 yards in circumference. Another tree of the same type, but not so symmetrical, grows at Billing Hall, the seat of Valentine Cary Elwes, Esq., near Northampton, and measures about 60 feet by 19 feet 5 inches. The branches, which spread over an area about 100 paces round, are supported by a great number of wooden props.
In the west of England this tree does not attain the same size and beauty as in the drier counties, the largest I have seen in Devonshire being at Bicton, which is about 21½ feet in girth, At Castlehill, in the same county, there is a tree about 80 feet by 14 feet 9 inches; and at Sherborne Castle, in Dorsetshire, there are a
- ↑ Eastern Arboretum, p. 84, plate opposite p. 104 (1841).
