500 THE UNIVERSE. 



She was on horseback, as were also her suite, and, a storm 

 having come on, she took shelter under this tree, the vast 

 foliage of which sufficed to protect the queen and all her 

 cavaliers from the rain. It is from this memorable adven- 

 ture, they add, that the old tree took the name of Chest, 

 nut of a Hundred Horses." l 



Yet, whatever astonishment we may feel at the extraordi- 

 nary dimensions attained by the trunks of certain trees, the 

 height to which others reach strikes us still more than their 

 growth in diameter. The king of our forests, the oak, 

 which poetic fiction looks upon as the emblem of passive 

 force, rears its crown of leaves one hundred feet above the 

 soil. 



In the East the imposing remains of the ancient forest 

 employed in building the temple of Jerusalem, the cedars of 

 Lebanon, the object of so much veneration, and which the 

 pilgrim only approaches with the sounds of a hymn on his 

 lips, spread forth their dark sheets of verdure to a height of 

 150 feet above the mountain. 



1 The celebrated journey of Jeanne of Aragon to the Castagno di Cento Ca- 

 valli, as the chestnut-tree of Etna is called in Sicily, is only a fable. Count Borch 

 maintains that it owes its name merely to the fact that fifty horses could be placed 

 within its trunk and fifty round about it. Some botanists, however, think that 

 this colossal tree is only a fusion of several individuals of the same species. But 

 this is scarcely probable; the vicinity presents several specimens which are almost 

 as vast, and which, for that reason, are known by distinct names in the country. 

 Count Borch, who has carefully examined the Hundred-Horse Chestnut, says 

 that at the first look one might think it arose from the junction of several trunks, 

 but that when it is attentively studied we find that it is only one tree. This fact 

 has been placed beyond doubt by the Canon Recupero, who had it dug round, and 

 saw that the five trunks end in one single colossal root. Borch, Lettres sur la 

 Sicile, Turin, 1782, t. i., p. 121. 



