THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 91 
Linden.” An old poem, which bears the date of 1408, informs 
us, that “before the gate rises a Linden, whose branches are 
sustained by sixty-seven columns.” The number of these 
columns, or pillars of stone, raised to support the heavy and 
widely spreading branches, one of which extends horizontally 
for more than a hundred feet, had increased to eighty-two 
when the tree was visited by Evelyn, and to one hundred and 
six when it was examined by Trembley. To these supports, 
doubtless, its preservation is chiefly owing; as the tender 
wood of the Linden could never sustain 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 bears the arms of Christopher, Duke of 
Wiirtemberg, with the date of 1558. At five or six feet from 
the ground, the trunk is thirty-five and a half English feet in 
circumference. If, therefore, it has grown at the actual rate 
of the Freiburg Linden, it must nearly have reached its thou- 
sandth anniversary. Or if, as in the case of the tree near 
Morft, we allow a sixth of an inch per annum for the average 
increase in diameter, its computed age would be a little over 
800 years; surely, a moderate estimate for a tree which was 
called the Great Linden more than six centuries ago. 
No tree of temperate climates so frequently attains an ex- 
traordinary size as the Plane, or Sycamore (Platanus) ; trunks 
of forty or fifty feet in circumference being by no means un- 
common in this country. The Oriental Plane offers many 
equally striking instances in the south of Europe, particularly 
in the Levant. The celebrated tree on the island of Cos, so 
conspicuously seen from the channel on the Asiatic side, has 
recently been beautifully figured in Allen’s “ Pictorial Tour 
in the Mediterranean.” 
But old trunks, both of Oriental and our own very similar 
species, are always hollow, — mere shells; hence, in the absence 
of historical data, their age is only to be computed by their 
rate of growth; which is so rapid for the first century or two, 
and, at the same time, the wood is so liable to decay, that the 
Plane-tree is not likely to afford any instances of extreme 
