and on the Means of ascertaining it. Stt 



years old. Bosc cites one which is near Sancerre, 30 feet in 

 circumference, and was known, it is said, by the name of the 

 great chestnut-tree, for 600 years. It would be desirable to have 

 precise information as to the growth of this species. 



7. The oriental plane-tree (Platane), (if it can be numbered 

 among European trees), is certainly one of the largest, but we are 

 ignorant of the law of its growth. There is a plane-tree in the 

 valley of Bujukdere, three leagues from Constantinople, which 

 reminds us of the one which Pliny has rendered so celebrated; 

 it is 160 feet round, and has formed a cavity of 80 feet in fcir- 

 cumference. I should wish travellers to ascertain, — 1. If it be 

 a single tree, or the amalgamation of many ; % How much it 

 has increased in a given time, which might be discovered by a 

 lateral nick, which would enable us to count the layers ; and, 

 3. By what law the growth of plane-trees of a century old is 

 regulated*.. 



8. I would also direct the attention of observers to the walnut- 

 tree (Noyer). Scammozzi, the architect, says that he saw, at 

 St Nicholas, in Lorraine, a table of a small piece of walnut-tree of 

 25 feet in size, on which Frederick III. gave a celebrated re- 

 past. We cannot determine the ages of similar trees, as we do 

 not know the rate of their increase : when they are aged, it would 

 be easy to ascertain it. • :')^]cn 



9. The orange and citron trees which are cultivafeS in 

 Europe increase most slowly, and become the oldest. It is as- 

 serted that the orange-tree of St Sabine at Rome was planted 

 by St Dominick in 1200, and that of Fondi by St Thomas 

 of Aquinus in 1278. The measurement of these trees, and the 

 verification of these traditions, might give an approximation of 

 the annual increase of the Jgrumi (bitter orange trees) of Italy. 



9. The cedars of which I formerly spoke, though they ap- 

 pear to me less aged than they are supposed to be, merit the at- 

 tention of observers •(•, it? 



10. The oak is undoubtedly one of the most long-lived trees of 

 Europe ; but its study is involved in great ambiguity, either be- 

 cause it is a tree which, by the admission of foresters, is princi- 

 pally modified by soil, or because the wood of the Quercus pe~ 

 'MM? n* • Oriental Plane, 720 years and upwards.— Or^an. 



f Cedars of Lebanon, abo^lt 800 years old.— Or^a/t. 



