of the laft who faw it. His account is dated 

 about fixteen, or feventeen, years ago. It had 

 then the appearance of five diftincl trees. 

 The fpace within them, he was allured, had 

 once been filled with folid timber, when the 

 whole formed only one tree. The poffibility 

 of this he could not at firft conceive j for the 

 five trees together contained a fpace of two 

 hundred and four feet in circumference. At 

 length however he was convinced, not only 

 by the teftimony of the country, and the 

 accurate examination of the canon Recupero, 

 a learned naturaliil in thofe parts, but by the 

 appearance of the trees themfelves, none of 

 which had any bark on the infide. This 

 chefnut is of fuch renown, that Brydone tells 

 us, he had feen it marked in an old map of 

 Sicily, published a hundred years ago*. 

 Among: other authors, who mention this 



o 



tree, Kircher gives us the following account of 

 it's condition in his day; which might be 

 about a .century before Brydone faw it; 

 " Oftendit mihi viae dux, unius caftaniae 

 corticem, tantae magnitudinis, ut intra earn 



* See Brydone's Trav. vol. i. p. 117. 



K 3 integer 



