AGE OF TREES 



It is at least doubtful if dancing would be very agreeable 

 upon such a cross-grained sort of floor ! A complete section 

 of one of them was carried across the United States to make 

 a dining-room table for an American millionaire. The age 

 of one of these trees has been estimated at 3600 years. That 

 is to say that it was a seedling in 1400 b.c, and has been 

 peacefully growing in a Californian valley during all the time 

 when Greece, Rome, Spain, France, Britain, and of course 

 the United States, developed their civilizations. The speci- 

 men of the Mammoth tree in the Natural History Museum 

 in London was 1335 years old. 



The possible age of many of our common trees is much 

 greater than any one would suppose. The "Jupiter" oak 

 in the forest of Fontainebleau is supposed to be 700 years 

 old. Another oak which was cut down at Bordya, in the 

 Baltic provinces of Russia, was supposed to be about 1000 

 years old. Other millennial trees are or were another oak 

 and two chestnuts: the oak grew in the Ardennes, the 

 chestnuts still flourish, one at Sancerre (France), and the 

 other the famous specimen on Mount Etna. There are 

 also eight olive trees in the garden of Gethsemane at 

 Jerusalem, which are certainly 1000 years old, and were, 

 according to tradition, in existence in the time of Jesus 

 Christ. 



And yet all these trees are mere infants compared to 

 Adanson's Baobab and the Dragon tree of Orotava. The 

 celebrated traveller alluded to visited the Cape Verde islands 

 in 1749 and found inscriptions made by English travellers 

 on the trunk 300 years before his time. From the growth 

 since then, he calculated that some of these trees were about 

 6000 years of age, and they were 27 feet in diameter.^ 



1 Bonnier, I.e. 

 48 



