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SNAKES' SLOUGH.

"There the snake throws her enamell'd skin."
SHAKSPEARE, Mids. Night's Dream.

ABOUT the middle of this month (September) we found in a field near a hedge the slough of a large snake, which seemed to have been newly cast. From circumstances it appeared as if turned wrong side outward, and as drawn off backward, like a stocking or woman's glove. Not only the whole skin, but scales from the very eyes, are peeled off, and appear in the head of the slough like a pair of spectacles. The reptile, at the time of changing his coat, had entangled himself intricately in the grass and weeds, so that the friction of the stalks and blades might promote this curious shifting of his exuviæ.

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It would be a most entertaining sight could a person be an eye-witness to such a feat, and see the snake in the act of changing his garment. As the convexity of the scales of the eyes in the slough is now inward, that circumstance alone is a proof that the skin has been turned: not to mention that now the present inside is much darker than the outer. If you look through the scales of the snake's eyes from the concave side, viz. as the reptile used them, they lessen objects much. Thus it appears from what has been said, that snakes crawl out of the mouth of their own sloughs, and quit the tail part last, just as eels are skinned by a cook maid. While the scales of the eyes are growing loose, and a new skin is forming, the creature, in appearance, must be blind, and feel itself in an awkward uneasy situation 19.

19 I have seen many sloughs or skins of snakes entire, after they have cast them off; and once in particular I remember to have found one of

OBSERVATIONS ON VEGETABLES.

479

TREES, ORDER OF LOSING THEIR LEAVES.

ONE of the first trees that becomes naked is the walnut: the mulberry, the ash, especially if it bears many keys, and the horse-chestnut, come next. All lopped trees, while their heads are young, carry their leaves a long while. Apple-trees and peaches remain green till very late, often till the end of November: young beeches never cast their leaves till spring, till the new leaves sprout and push them off: in the autumn the beechen leaves turn of a deep chestnut colour. Tall beeches cast their leaves about the end of October.

these sloughs so intricately interwoven amongst some brakes that it was with difficulty removed without being broken: this undoubtedly was done by the creature to assist in getting rid of its incumbrance.

I have great reason to suppose that the eft or common lizard also casts its skin or slough, but not entire like the snake; for on the 30th of March, 1777, I saw one with something ragged hanging to it, which appeared to be part of its old skin*.-MARKWICK.

* I have often seen caterpillars in the act of changing their skins, and of throwing off the skin and becoming chrysalides; and also the fly in the act of coming forth. The skin is thrown off by a wriggling motion of the body, beginning from the head: the fly breaks through by quick and sharp exertion of the legs; the wings of the moth and butterfly are in miniature when they come forth; they immediately climb to a situation where by position the wings hang down, and the wings quickly grow to their full size and become rigid. If they are prevented from reaching such a situation, or dislodged before the wings are full grown and stiffened, they will remain rumpled and unserviceable.-W. H.

SIZE AND GROWTH.

MR. MARSHAM of Stratton, near Norwich, informs me by letter thus: "I became a planter early; so that an oak which I planted in 1720 is become now, at one foot from the earth, twelve feet six inches in circumference, and at fourteen feet (the half of the timber length) is eight feet two inches. So if the bark was to be measured as timber, the tree gives one hundred and sixteen and a half feet, buyer's measure. Perhaps you never heard of a larger oak while the planter was living. I flatter myself that I increased the growth by washing the stem, and digging a circle as far as I supposed the roots to extend, and by spreading sawdust, &c. as related in the Philosophical Transactions. I wish I had begun with beeches, (my favourite trees as well as yours), I might then have seen very large trees of my own raising. But I did not begin with beech till 1741, and then by seed; so that my largest is now, at five feet from the ground, six feet three inches in girth, and with its head spreads a circle of twenty yards diameter. This tree was also dug round, washed, &c." Stratton, 24 July, 17901.

' Robert Marsham, of Stratton Strawless, a country gentleman of similar tastes in many respects with Gilbert White, commenced his observations on some of the proceedings of nature at an earlier period than our historian, and continued them to a later date. A register of the indications of spring, published by him in the Philosophical Transactions, begins in 1736, and is continued for more than half a century. His latest paper in that valuable collection, is devoted to an account of the measurements of trees, being supplemental to a communication made by him nearly forty years before. It contains, among others, the girth of the oak planted by himself in 1720: a singular instance of longevity combined with perseverance in the same pursuit. Few are the men who live to measure trees planted by themselves seventy-seven years previously!

It was at the hospitable seat of his "very worthy and ingenious friend, Robert Marsham," that Stillingfleet prepared his Calendar of Flora for 1755, which has been already referred to. He thus speaks of its situation: "All the country about is a dead flat; on one side is a barren black heath; on the other a light sandy loam; partly tilled, partly pasture land sheltered with fine groves."-E. T. B.

The circumference of trees planted by myself, at one

foot from the ground (1790).

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The great oak in the Holt, which is deemed by Mr. Marsham to be the biggest in this island, at seven

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2 It is now impossible so to identify the trees whose measurements are given in the text, as to warrant a statement of their actual circumference, and thus to afford data for determining their rate of growth in their

feet from the ground, measures in circumference thirtyfour feet. It has in old times lost several of its boughs, and is tending to decay. Mr. Marsham computes, that at fourteen feet length this oak contains one thousand feet of timber3.

It has been the received opinion that trees grow in height only by their annual upper shoot. But my neighbour over the way, whose occupation confines him to one spot, assures me that trees are expanded and raised in the lower parts also. The reason that he gives is this: the point of one of my firs began for the first time to peer over an opposite roof at the beginning of summer; but before the growing season was over, the whole shoot of the year, and three or four joints of the body beside, became visible to him as he sits on his form in his shop. According to this supposition, a tree may earlier, and in their more mature years. The greatest beech which I observed in 1835, in the park-like enclosure at the back of Gilbert White's house at Selborne, measured ten feet in circumference at about one foot from the ground: the largest ash in the same enclosure, nine feet: and a fine fir, which the author was wont to speak of as his eldest son, and which is perhaps the great fir alluded to above, measured eight feet in circumference. If, however, the great fir be the same with Gilbert White's eldest son, its growth during the last forty-five years has been slow as compared with that which took place in the forty earlier years of its existence.-E. T. B.

3 There are in the Holt two great oaks; one known as the Grindstone, and the other as the Buck's Horn. The former, I apprehend, is the one measured by Mr. Marsham. At about five feet from the ground its circumference is fully thirty-six feet. It is now a ruin merely, and destitute altogether of life: a massive ruin, however, which will resist, through generations yet to come, the utmost force of the elements. Its singularly formed and gigantic vertical branch will probably be severed, before many years are past, from the stupendous trunk: but the trunk itself will endure. The care which has been judiciously taken to preserve it from wanton or thoughtless injury, is highly praiseworthy: both it and the Buck's Horn are surrounded by a fence and hedge.

The Buck's Horn oak is of a very different form from the Grindstone. It is not yet entirely dead. A figure of it, from a sketch taken at the same time with that from which the above drawing was made, will be given in the work entitled Selborne and its Vicinity, to which I have already had occasion to refer for the further illustration of much of the local scenery.-E. T. B.

4 Mr. White is innocent of this observation, and merely relates the

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