184 LIFE OF A TREE. 
well-known tree, for, according to ancient docu- 
ments, the new city was built after the de- 
struction of the old one, which was called 
Helmbundt, “near the great Lime-tree.” The 
city was consequently often called ‘“ Neustadt 
near the great Lime-tree!” One would have 
thought ‘‘the Lime-tree near Neustadt,” a more 
correct expression, but such even then was the 
size of the tree, and so remarkable was it on 
that account, that the former designation, which 
was perhaps at first a bon mot, came to be used 
with complete propriety. It is mentioned nearly 
two hundred years later in an old poem which 
describes it as a great tree, the wide-spread 
branches of which were supported on siaty-seven 
pillars of stone, placed there by different persons. 
Two hundred years later still, the number of 
pillars which sustained it was eighty-two, and 
at the present time is upwards of one hundred ! 
The tree is divided at the summit into two 
immense branches, one of which is upwards 
of one hundred feet in length; the other was 
injured in a storm in 1773. 
In 1664 Evelyn tells us that the trunk of this 
huge tree measured nearly forty feet in circum- 
