THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 97 
*°O, couldst thou speak, 
As in Dodona once thy kindred trees, 
Oracular, I would not curious ask 
The future, best unknown ; but, at thy mouth, 
Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past ! 
By thee I might correct, erroneous oft, 
The clock of history ; facts and events 
Timing more punctual ; unrecorded facts 
Recovering ; and misstated, setting right.” 
Rich although this country is, above all other parts of the 
world, in different species of the Oak, it would not be diffi- 
cult to explain why we cannot boast of such venerable trees, 
“Whose boughs are mossed with age, 
And high top bald with dry antiquity.” 
It is not merely, or chiefly, that, in clearing away the forest 
which so recently covered the soil, “‘ men were famous accord- 
ing as they had lifted up axes upon the thick trees.” The 
close, stifling growth of our primeval forests, like the demo- 
cratic institutions which they seem to foreshadow, although 
favorable to mediocrity, forbids preéminence. “A chilly, 
cheerless, everlasting shade” prevents the fullest individual 
development ; and even if the woodman’s axe had spared the 
older trees, their high-drawn trunks, no longer shielded by 
the dense array of their brethren, were sure to be overthrown 
by the winds. Had the aboriginal inhabitants been tillers of 
the ground, our White Oaks had long since spread their 
broad brawny arms, and emulated their more renowned 
brethren in the parks of England. The “ Charter Oak” at 
Hartford, so conspicuous in the colonial history of Connecti- 
cut, and a few others of equal size, but less note, were prob- 
ably mere saplings at the first settlement of the country. 
“The Wadsworth Oak,” in Geneseo, N. Y., however, may 
claim a higher antiquity. It stands in an old “ Indian clear- 
ing,” on the bank of the Genesee River, which, we are sorry 
to say, is gradually undermining its roots and threatening its 
destruction ; — a catastrophe which we beseech the worthy 
proprietor of that princely estate to avert, by a seasonable 
embankment. A note in an earlier volume of this Review 4 
1 Vol. xliv. p. 345, note. 
