Land Shells:- Bùlimus lùbricus, Achátina acícula, Vertigo sexdentata.

Plants. In Gawdy Hall Wood, in the neighbourhood, I found Orthotrichum Lyéllii, growing upon several trees. In the same wood are also found Ophrys nìdus àvis, Láthyrus Nissòlia, Dipsacus pilòsus. In a field adjoining Mendham Lane, Crocus vérnus was very abundant. I was informed that Fritillària meleagris also grew there. At Shotford Bridge I saw Hottònia palústris; and above Mendham mill, a large patch of Tulipa sylvestris. In Weybread gravel pit I found one or two species of the fossil Echìnus, and numerous species of the more common mosses, with Hýpnum alopecurum, dendröìdes, and filícinum. I also found Tórtula rígida, Dícranum adiantöìdes, and Bartràmia pomiformis in the neighbourhood.

SHELL SNAILS AND OTHER NATURAL OBJECTS MET WITH IN DERBYSHIRE.

On my return into Derbyshire, I entered into an investigation of the land and freshwater shells in the park and neighbourhood of Calke Abbey, and discovered the following

Land Species:- Vítrina pellucida, Hèlix nemoràlis, arbustòrum, rufescens, caperàta, aspérsa, nìtens, híspida, radiàta, fúlva, pulchella, brévipes; Clausília rugòsa, Bùlimus lubricus and obscurus, Achátina acícula, Carýchium mínimum (this is not uncommon among the roots of Bryum ligulàtum); Pùpa umbilicata and edéntula. Most of the above I found under large stones, and in the crevices of the limestone rock, which is here very abundant.

Of Freshwater Species, I found A'nodon cýgneus, Cyclas córnea, Succínea amphibia, Planórbis vórtex, Limnèus péreger. In dragging the river Trent, between Repton and Swarkeston Bridge, I procured A'nodon cygneus, Mýsca pictòrum, ovata; Succínea amphibia, oblónga (found on stalks of grass some feet from the water side); Limnèus péreger, palústris, fossàrius.

The Fish we captured were bream, barbel, roach, chub, pike, perch, eel, and trout.

[Plants.] In some ponds by the side of Swarkeston bridge, I saw Rùmex Hydrolápathum; and in Calke Park I found Lathræ`a Squamària, growing at the roots of old thorn trees.

[Birds.] The tree pigeon or stockdove (Colúmba Enas) is not uncommon in the park: I have found their nests on one or two occasions. They were built in the hollow of a

tree, where a large branch had been originally broken off, and, the wet having penetrated, the wood had decayed and formed a large hole about 18 in. deep, at the bottom of which was the nest. One was in a tree of common maple (Acer campestre L.), about 10 ft. from the ground. It was formed of a few small twigs, dried reeds, and straws; and contained two white eggs of a smaller size than those of the wood pigeon. The nuthatch is common here, and the lesser spotted woodpecker is occasionally seen.

I have duplicate shells of many of the above-mentioned species, and should be happy to make exchanges, for other British land and freshwater shells, with those of your correspondents who may be so disposed.

At Sir G. Crewe's, Bart.,

I am, Sir, yours, &c.

Calke Abbey, Derbyshire, May 24. 1833.

A. BLOXAM.

ART. VI. Some Remarks relating to the Fall of an aged Ash Tree. By the Rev. W. T. BREE, M.A.

Sir,

"Te, triste lignum, te caducum."

Thou luckless falling tree.

Hor.

THE heavy gales of wind from the west and north-west, which prevailed in the early part of December last, inflicted upon me what I consider an irreparable loss. On the 3d of December, a large and very aged ash tree, completely enveloped with ivy, was blown up by the roots, crushing its humbler neighbours in its fall, and leaving in my shady walk a sad unsightly gap, "hiatus valde deflendus," which it will require many long years to fill up, if, indeed, its place be ever again supplied with an object of equal beauty and grandeur. The tree bore the appearance of having formerly, at some distant day, been pollarded or lopped at about eighteen feet from the ground; and the trunk had certainly for many years been partially hollow, and in a state of decay, insomuch that the wasps occasionally constructed their nests within it, making their entrance just above the surface, through an orifice caused by the decay of one of the spurs. I had long been aware that the fatal day could not be very far distant, when this most picturesque object would be levelled with the ground; for it had for several years retained its hold in the earth, apparently, by little more than one main fang of its roots, aided by the large stem of

The Ivy (of greater thickness than a man's thigh), which, springing up directly on the opposite side, clasped the trunk, and acted like a backstay to keep it in its erect position; the ivy and the ash thus mutually supporting each other. Moreover, the ivy, towards the very top of the tree, formed so large and massive a head of persistent foliage, as to occasion the wind to have additional power against it, and cause the vessel, as it were, to carry too great a press of sail. In order to give some idea of the magnificence of this individual specimen of ivy, the finest, perhaps, on the whole, out of many extraordinary fine ones on the premises, I may mention that the men employed to cut up and clear away the windfall calculated that there was at least enough of the evergreen to form a good waggon-load or more, which now, alas! served no better purpose than to feed the sheep, to whom the shrub affords a favourite and wholesome repast. But to what purpose, you will ask, is this lamentation over my private loss, which can hardly be a subject of the slightest interest to you or any of your readers? I have, however, a motive in recording the circumstance, over and above the, perhaps, pardonable satisfaction I might naturally feel in offering a tribute to the memory of a departed favourite. All the catastrophes of nature are more or less interesting, were it only that they serve oftentimes to bring to light her hidden treasures, and present us with objects which otherwise would have escaped observation. An accidental landslip, for example, or the disrupture of an overhanging cliff, discloses the fossils and minerals embedded beneath the earth's surface. The bursting of a dam, and the consequent draining of the waters which were confined by it, expose to view the aquatic plants and animals which abound in that element. So, also (without multiplying examples), from the fall of my venerable ivy-mantled ash, may be gleaned, if I mistake not, some scraps and odd ends of natural history, not quite devoid of interest, perhaps, to others as well as to myself.

In the first place, if any doubt could remain upon the subject, I had, on this occasion, an incontestable proof of the injurious effects of

"The ivy which had hid the princely trunk,

And suck'd the verdure out on 't."

The decay of the tree, I feel no hesitation in believing, had, in some degree at least, been hastened and promoted by the close and pinching embraces of the parasite; the stems of which were tightly laced and plaited together, and in some places literally tied in hard knots round the smaller branches

of its foster-parent: and, accordingly, the effects of this strangulation were plainly to be seen in the deep weals or indentures imprinted in various parts, not merely of the bark, but of the solid wood of the tree itself. The foliage, too, had, in consequence, become scanty in quantity, and diminished in luxuriance; a circumstance, I may add, which served grealty to heighten the picturesque effect of the object. The ash foliage is at all times delicate and beautiful; and in the present instance, as it hung in light and airy festoons, backed and set off by the sable masses of ivy from behind, it might have vied in comparison with the choicest lace or needlework embroidered on a dark rich mantle of velvet. I have seen such repeated instances of the palpable injury produced by ivy upon timber trees, that, even putting aside the à priori probability of the case, as well as the testimony of antiquity, I cannot but feel surprise that the contrary opinion should ever have been seriously entertained. The lovers of landscape, I think, would be acting at least a more ingenuous part, were they undisguisedly to take up the defence of this charming evergreen on its own merits alone, and endeavour to preserve it from spoliation solely on the score of its intrinsic beauty and ornamental qualities*, rather than have recourse to the untenable position, that it does no injury (or even does good) to the trees it decorates.+ Let us grant (if it be so demanded of us) that the ivy derives no nutriment, by means of its fibres or tendrils, from the tree to which it clings (though whether it may not do so in some slight degree may well be made a question); still, it must be admitted that the root, especially if it be a large one, impoverishes the soil more or less, by taking up some portion of the moisture which would otherwise go to the support of the timber tree. A dense impervious covering of ivy, too, must, one would suppose, be prejudicial,

* The following remarks are from Dr. Johnston's interesting Flora of Berwick upon Tweed:-" St. Pierre has said he never saw the ivy on the trunks of pines, firs, or other trees whose foliage lasts the whole year round. [With us it frequently envelopes firs, pines, holly, and other evergreens.-W. T. B.] It invests those only which are stripped by the hand of winter; and, when its protector has fallen a prey to death, it restores to him again the honours of the forest, where he lives no longer." (p. 209.) "Should aught be unlovely which thus can shed Grace on the dying, and leaves on the dead?'

Bernard Barton.” (p. 64.) —J. D.

+ See a letter, in the 11th vol. of the Linnean Transactions, by H. Repton, Esq., in which he contends" that ivy is not only less injurious to trees than it is generally deemed, but that it is often beneficial." The facts adduced of timber trees attaining to a very large size, though profusely covered with ivy, are no conclusive proof of the beneficial effects of the evergreen. Trees so circumstanced will often thrive, and attain a large size; not, however, in consequence of the ivy, but in spite of it.

by excluding from the trunk and branches the light of the sun, and preventing a free circulation of air round their surfaces. Even practical woodmen, who maintain that ivy proves beneficial by "keeping the trees warm," have before now acknowledged to me that it is injurious to the bark; which, they allow, is hereby prevented from attaining its usual thickness and substance. But all this, it will be urged, is little more than mere theory and plausibility of argument, which ought to be employed cautiously and with a sparing hand in such a matter-of-fact affair as natural history. What I would chiefly insist on then, is the fact, that deep weals are often inflicted on the solid wood, positive grooves, occasioned by the tight pressure of the ivy.* Young trees, also, or at least trees

*Mr. Bree has sent a length of 6 in. of one of the branches, about 4 in. in diameter, of the fallen ash tree, for the purpose of exhibiting the effect of the ivy's constriction on the ash tree's bark and wood. Into the bark and wood of the cylindrical log sent are impressed two weals or grooves, each an inch or more in breadth, and from half an inch to near an inch in depth; and the weals or grooves have a course so gently spiral, that not quite two coils take place on the log's length of 6 in. The depth of the grooves is, in part, produced by the bark and wood having, from the tightness of the ivy's constriction, risen, like the banks of a channel, into a ridge on each side the grooves which the branches of ivy, one in each, had first occasioned and then occupied. The bark of the ash at the bottom of these grooves is dead, dense from pressure, and scarcely the eighth of an inch in thickness: still the wood beneath it is quite alive.

That the ivy, and other twining shrubs, both deciduous and evergreen, do cause by their constriction more or less of injury to most of the trees and shrubs about which they entwine themselves, is not to be disputed. Shakspeare (as quoted by Smith in his English Flora, vol. i. p. 326.) has truly and tastefully remarked

"So doth the woodbine, the sweet honeysuckle,

Gently entwist the maple."

Gentle, howsoever, as are the first embraces of the honeysuckle, and of other twining shrubs, while their stem or branch is yet tender, and, through its tenderness, powerless; they become, with the age, size, strength, hardness, and consequent incapacity for dilatation, of their stem or branch, effective agents of an obviously injurious constriction; for the coils of woody-stemmed twining plants are scarcely in any, perhaps in no, species enlarged in capacity so fast as is the diameter of the trunk, stem, or branch, which these coils encircle; that is, presuming the supporting tree or shrub to be in a healthy and freely growing condition.

Cowper, whose notices of nature are most accurate, gives coincident evidence, and most eloquently deposed, on this fact, in the following lines:"As woodbine weds the plant within her reach, Rough elm, or smooth-grain'd ash, or glossy beech, In spiral rings ascends the trunk, and lays

Her golden tassels on the leafy sprays;

But does a mischief while she lends a grace,

Straitening its growth by such a strict embrace."

Cowper was one of those whose mode of apprehending was such as

"Draws us a profit from all things we see;'