FAMOUS GIANT LOG

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21184, 3 November 1938, Page 4

FAMOUS GIANT LOG

GIVEN TO ABERDEEN A board, which must be one oi the widest ever cut from a pine tree in this country—it is over five feet in widthnow reposes in the Museum of the Forestry Department of the University of Aberdeen. It has been presented to the University by the Duke of Richmond and Gordon on the disposal of Gordon Castle effects. This remarkable board cut from a Scots pine tree has lain in Gordon Castle for 130 years. It bears witness to the gigantic pine trees which once flourished In the Forest of Glenmore. and which were cut in the latter part of the eighteenth century to supply the shipyards at Garmouth and Kingston, at the mouth of the River Spey. The actual specimen which has been preserved all these years was cut by a Hull merchant called William Osborne, who, it is recorded, In twenty-two years “built at the mouth of the Spey, where never vessel was built before, fortyseven sail of ship of upwards of 19,000 tons burthen, the largest of them 1050 tons.” The great trees were floated down the Spey from the forests of Badenoch and Strathspey. The scene then on the river must have rivalled any American logging scene, for it is said that 20,000 logs and spars were floated loose at a time down the river, these being kept on the move by men on the banks armed with long poles.