242 HISTORICAL NOTICE OF CELEBRATED TREES. [Aug. 



covering altogether 1 9 English poles of ground. "Wallace and three 

 hundred of his men hid themselves from the English among the 

 branches of this tree, wliich was then in full leaf. In a very old 

 oak wood, on the north side of Loch Arkek, in Lochaber, there are, 

 or were lately, many trees from 10 to 14 feet in girth, and one 

 was there measured, which was found to Ije, at 4 feet above the 

 root, 27 feet 6 inches. 



In Samogitia, a province of Eussian Lithuania, there v.'cre two 

 oaks which were believed to have existed in tlie times of Paganism. 

 One of them, situated at Bordza, having been greatly injured by 

 an accidental conflagration, was cut down by the proprietor in 

 1812. It measured 41-^ English feet in circumference at the base, 

 and 281- feet about the middle of the trunk at 18 feet from the 

 ground: 7l0 concentric layers were distinctly counted on the 

 transverse section from the circumference towards the centre, where 

 the space in which the layers could not be clearly made out, was 

 estimated to have comprised 300 more. If therefore the injured 

 portion was not over-estimated, the tree must have been 1000 

 years old. 



But these are much smaller oaks than one in the south of 

 Ei'ance, of which the following account has been inserted in 

 the annals of the Agricultural Society of Eochelle : — " At about 

 six miles west-south-west of Saintes (in the Lower Charente), near 

 the road to Cozes, stands an old oak tree, in the large court of a 

 modern mansion, which still promises to live many centuries, if 

 the axe of some Vandal does not cut it down. The following are 

 the proportions of the king of the forests of France, and probably 

 of all Europe. The diameter of the trunk at the ground is from 

 9 to 10 yards (consequently its circumference is from 85 to 94 

 feet) ; at the height of a man, from 6^ to 7^^ yards (that is, from 

 60 to 67 feet in circumference), the diameter of the whole head 

 is from 40 to 43 yards, the height of the truul: 8 yards ; the 

 general height of the tree, 22 yards. A room has been cut out 

 of the dead wood of the interior of the trunk, measuring from 

 9 to 12 feet in diameter and 9 feet high, and they have cut a 

 circular seat out of the solid wood. They put a circular table in 

 the middle, when it . is wanted, around which twelve guests can sit. 

 A door and a window admit daylight into this new sort of dining- 

 room, which is_ adorned by a living carpet of ferns, fungi, lichen, 

 and mosses. Upon a plate of wood . taken from the trunk, about 

 the height of the door, 200 annual rings have been counted ; whence 

 it results, in taking a horizontal radius from the exterior circum- 

 ference to the centre of ' the oak, that there must have been from 

 1800 to: 2000 of these rings, which makes its age nearly 2000 



