A TREE 1150 YEARS OLD. 185 
ference. Calculations have been made of the 
probable age of this vegetable giant, and it 
seems pretty certain that it cannot be much 
younger than eleven hundred and fifty years! 
It appears that at various times, parts of this 
huge tree have suffered serious injury; as Evelyn 
informs us that it had been, before his time, 
much larger than it was even then, for many 
ruined pillars were visible which had once up- 
held its massive boughs. 
At Schalouse in Switzerland there is another 
famous Lime-tree, “ under which is a bower com- 
posed of its branches, capable of containing three 
hundred persons sitting at ease. It has also a 
fountain set about with many tables, formed only 
of the boughs, to which they ascend by steps, 
all kept so accurately, and so very thick, that the 
sun looks never into it.”* It is related by the 
same author, that the Emperor Frederic III., gave 
once a magnificent repast upon a table which was 
a solid block of a tree, and was five-and-twenty 
feet in diameter, and of proportionate thickness. 
The Chestnut-tree sometimes attains a great 
age and an enormous size. ‘There are some large 
* Evelyn “ Discourse on Forest Trees.” 
