94 ESSAYS. 
vent our assigning the highest antiquity to a tree not origi- 
nally indigenous to Sicily, but doubtless introduced from the 
East. 
There are, however, some colossal Chestnuts upon Mount 
Etna, with undoubtedly single trunks; three of which, re- 
cently measured, are found to have a circumference respec- 
tively of fifty-seven, sixty-four, and seventy feet. Some gen- 
eral idea of their age may perhaps be formed by a comparison 
with other individuals, whose history is better known, such as 
that at Sancerre, described by Bose, which, although only 
thirty-three feet in girth at six feet from the ground, has been 
called the “Great Chestnut of Sancerre” for six hundred 
years; or the celebrated “ Tortworth Chestnut,” which Strutt, 
who in his * Sylva Britannica” has given a fine illustration 
of its massive bole, considers as probably the largest as well 
as the oldest tree standing in England, and which in the 
reign of Stephen, who ascended the throne in 1135, was 
already remarkable for its size, and well known as a signal 
boundary to the manor of Tamworth, now Tortworth, in 
Gloucestershire. But even this tree, although it has probably 
long since celebrated its thousandth anniversary, does not 
equal the smallest of the three Sicilian Chestnuts, being only 
fifty-two feet in circumference at five feet from the ground. 
In the ascending seale of longevity, we pass from the Chest- 
nut to the Oak, the emblem of embodied strength, one of the 
longest-lived, as it is the slowest-growing, of deciduous-leaved 
forest trees. The light and soft wood of the Linden, and 
even of the Chestnut, seems incompatible with great longevity. 
Such trees of eight hundred or a thousand years old are 
extraordinary phenomena, owing their prolonged existence to 
a rare conjunction of favorable circumstances,— the more 
important, as they are unexpected witnesses to the truth of 
our leading proposition. But this is no very uncommon age 
for that 
* Lord of the woods, the long-surviving Oak.’ 
The briefest biographical notice of Oaks remarkable for 
their age or size, or for historic memorials attesting their 
antiquity, would alone fill our pages. We can only refer the 
