96 ESSAYS. 
Chronicle,” edited by Professor Lindley, we copy the follow- 
ing account, which purports to have been extracted from the 
Annals of the Agricultural Society of Rochelle. 
“At about six miles west-southwest of Saintes (in the 
Lower Charente) near the road to Cozes, stands an old Oal- 
tree, in the large court of a modern mansion, which still 
promises to live many centuries, if the axe of some Vandal 
does not cut it down. The following are the proportions of 
this king of the forests of France, and probably of all Europe. 
The diameter of the trunk at the ground is from nine to ten 
yards [consequently its circumference is from eighty- five to 
ninety-four feet]; at the height of a man, from six and a half 
to seven and a half yards [from sixty to sixty-seven feet in 
circumference |; the diameter of the whole head, from forty 
to forty-three yards; the height of the trunk, eight yards; the 
general height of the tree, twenty-two yards. A room has 
been cut out of the dead wood of the interior of the trunk, 
measuring from nine to twelve feet in diameter, and nine feet 
high ; aan they have cut a circular seat out of the solid wood. 
They put a round table in the middle, when it is wanted, 
around which twelve guests can sit. A door and a window 
admit daylight into this new sort of dining-room, which is 
adorned by a living carpet of Ferns, Fungi, Lichens, ete. 
Upon a plate of wood taken from the trunk about the height 
of the door, two hundred annual rings have been counted, 
whence it results, in taking a horizontal radius from the ex- 
terior circumference to the centre of the oak, that there must 
have been from 1800 to 2000 of these rings; which makes its 
age nearly two thousand years.” 
We should have been told, however, from what portion of 
the radius this block was taken. If near the circumference, 
where the rings are the narrowest, the age of the tree has 
been over-estimated ; perhaps not materially so, as it must 
have been growing at a slow and nearly equable rate for 
mdny centuries ; if towards the centre, the computed age is 
within the truth. To this tree, therefore, as being probably 
the patriarch of the species in Europe, may well be applied 
the lines addressed by Cowper to the Yardley Oak: — 
