president's address. 1G9 



Agreeing with Mr. Bowman* in considering tliat De Can- 

 dolle's reckoning, of one line in breadth, is too low for the annual 

 growth of an old Yew tree, I would estimate the mean average 

 of this individual WelUngtonia at one line and a half, or 30 lines 

 in twenty years ; consequently the number of years that tree had 

 grown would amount almost to 2,690 years. Yet, as the 

 appearance of the light wood struck me as that of- a far quicker 

 growing tree than a Yew^ I am inclined to hold that my own 

 estimate of its age is too high. If, then, we take its average 

 annual growth at double the former, or 3 lines, or a quarter of 

 an inch, in diameter, per annum, the age would in such case be 

 1,344 years — a much more likely period. This, indeed, is a 

 physical problem, which may, from future opportunities, be 

 solved. 



Some Botanists have considered it by no means improbable 

 that certain Exogenous trees may have been Sovereigns of the 

 Forest, at the beginning of our era, more than 1,800 years ago.f 

 Such may, in fact, have been the case with at least two species of 

 trees, exclusive of the WelUngtonia — the one an Angiospermous 

 Exogen, the common Oak (^Quercus rohur)^ and the other a Gym- 

 nospermous Exogen, the Cedar of Lebanon^ (Cedriis Lihani). 

 Diodorus Siculus, who flourished about 44 e.g., writes {Lib. 19, 

 cap. 58), that in his day Lebanon was full of Cedar trees, which 

 were wonderful for their beauty and size. And our Poet, Mason, 

 describing the antiquity of those trees on Lebanon, says : — 



" Cedars there 



Coeval witli the shy-croioii'd 7nountain''s self, 



Spread wide their giant arms." — {English Garden, Book 2.) 



* See " Proceeding-s of British Association," 1836. 



t Lindley, " Vegetable Kingdom," 2nd edition, p. 235. 



t Another Gymnospermous tree, but of slow growth with us, is the Yew, that attains to 

 a vast age. Mr. Bowman (" Proceedings of British Association," 1836) mentions a yew 

 tree, in Gresford Church-yard, in North Wales, whose mean diameter was 8 feet 6 in,, 

 or 1,224 lines, which, according to De Candolle's calculation, would represent as many 

 years. But Mr. Bowman supposed the then age of it to be 1,419 years. A larger Yew, 

 in Darley Church yard, having a mean diameter of 9 feet 5 in., gave, from horizontal 

 sections, 2,006 years as its age. Of course, the breadth of the annual rings varies some- 

 what in every tree ; and the quick-growing species, as Willows, Poplars, Larches, and 

 Firs, cannot in this respect be placed on the sa7ne scale with Oaks, Walnuts, Spanish 

 Chestnuts, Yews, and others of slow increase. 



