37G HISTORICAL NOTICE OF CELEBRATED TREES. [Oct. 



and which are now sub-divided into five others smaller. If it has 

 grown at the same rate as that of Fribourg, its age will be 1235 

 years, and it was about 875 years old at the time of the battle 

 of IMorat. A third example of lime tree remarkable both for size 

 and its connection with history, is that of Neustadt on the Kocher, 

 in the kingdom of Wurtemberg. According to ancient documents 

 existing in the registers of the town, this tree, which belongs to the 

 large-leaved species {Tilia macrophyllct), must have attained a great 

 size in 1229, when the old town of Helmbundt having been 

 destroyed by an earthquake, the new one, built along the great road, 

 hard by the lime tree, was called in consequence Neiistadt an dcr 

 (jrosscn Linden, i.e. " Neustadt near the great lime tree." An ancient 

 poem, which bears the date of 1408, informs us that "before the 

 gate rises a lime, whose branches are supported by 67 pillars." 

 The number of these columns or pillars of stone, raised to support 

 the heavy and widely spreading branches, which are artificially 

 trained, had increased to 82 in 1664, when the tree was visited by 

 Evelyn, and to 106 when it was examined in 1831 by M. Jules 

 Trembley at the desire of the late Professor De Candolle. To 

 these supports, doubtless, its preservation is chiefly owing, as the 

 tender wood of the lime tree could never support the enormous 

 weight of the limbs, or resist the force of the winds. These pillars 

 are nearly covered with inscriptions, of which the most ancient that 

 was extant in Evelyn's time bore the date of 1551; but the oldest 

 now legible exhibits the armorial bearings of Christopher, Duke of 

 Wurtemberg, with the date of 1558 sculptured on the two front 

 -columns. The names of other noblemen who have erected the 

 pillars are severally inscribed on some of them. This tree divides 

 at the top into two enormous branches, one of which is 103 ft. 

 long ; the other was broken to only half that length by a gale of 

 wind in 1773. Previously to this accident the tree had begun to show 

 symptoms of decay, partly from injuries not very clearly explained, 

 and partly from the artificial horizontal direction which its larger 

 -branches had been trained to assume, but still the stretch of its 

 rb ranches extended to nearly 400 ft. Evelyn, who has given a 

 •detailed description of this tree as it appeared in 1664, states that 

 then the trunk was in circumference 37 ft. 3 in. of Wurtemberg 

 measure ; and according to Trembley, it was in 1831 still 3 7 ft. 

 6;^ in. of the same measure, taken at 5 or 6 feet from the 

 ground, thus proving either that the tree had scarcely increased in 

 diameter during 167 years, or that Evelyn's measurement had been 

 taken nearer the ground, perhaps at the very base where the roots 

 began to diverge. Now, to calculate the age of this tree. We see 

 that the girth at 5 or 6 feet from the ground in 1831 was 37 ft. 



