194 " A FEW NOTCHES ON OLD TREES." 



84 ft. ; and its width over all is 242 ft. It has a spiral 

 staircase leading up into the tree, and it is supported by no 

 less than 326 props. 



Then again the oldest trees are said to be baobab trees 

 (Adansonia digitata) of Senegal, and the banyan or Ficus 

 Indica. One of these latter grows on an island in the river 

 Nerbudda, and is believed to have been flourishing in the 

 time of Alexander the Great (b.c. 356), and which then, 

 according to the historian Nearchus, was capable of over- 

 shadowing 10,000 men. Parts of it have been carried away 

 by floods, but it can now shade 7,000 men, and its circum- 

 ference, measuring its principal trunk only, is 2,000 ft. 

 The chief trunks of this tree greatly exceed our English 

 oaks in thickness, and are above 300 in number. The 

 smaller stems are more than 3,000 in number. (Show 

 Drawing.) The banyan sends down a large number of stems 

 from the branches to the ground, and these then form aerial 

 or adventitious roots — several thousands of them in old 

 trees — and in this way, by extension upon extension, one tree 

 covers a very large extent of ground. The banyan is held 

 in special reverence by the Brahmins, as is its congener, the 

 Sacred Fig {Ficus religiosa), also called peepal and bo-tree 

 by the Buddhists, so that it is said the sites of temples can 

 be readily distinguished as Brahmin or Buddhist by the 

 presence of one or other ti'ee. 



The bo-tree of the sacred but ruined city of Anurad- 

 hapura, 80 miles north of Kandy, is (it is said) the oldest 

 tree in the world. It is stated to have been planted in 288 

 B.C. as a branch of the tree under which Gaatama sat when 

 he became Buddha (Sir James Emerson Tennent believed 

 that in 1859 the tree was really of the wonderful age of 2,147 

 years). The baobab or Adansonia is believed to be the 

 largest tree, as regards trunk, in the world, the stem being 



