THE AGE OF TREES 43 



greatest personages have esteemed it an honor to go 

 and pray in this rustic sanctuary and meditate a 

 moment under the shade of the old tree which has 

 seen so many graves open and shut. According to 

 its size, they consider this oak to be about nine hun- 

 dred years old. The acorn that produced it must, 

 then, have germinated about the year 1000. To-day 

 the old oak carries its monstrous branches without 

 effort. Glorified by men and ravaged by lightning, 

 it peacefully follows the course of ages, perhaps hav- 

 ing before it a future equal to its past. 



"Much older oaks are known. In 1824 a wood- 

 cutter of Ardennes felled a gigantic oak in whose 

 trunk were found sacrificial vases and antique coins. 

 The old oak had had fifteen or sixteen centuries of 

 existence. 



"After the Allouville oak I will tell you of some 

 more companions of the dead; for it is above all in 

 these fields of repose, where the sanctity of the 

 place protects them against the injuries of man, that 

 the trees attain such an advanced age. Two yews 

 in the cemetery of Haie-de-Routot, department of 

 Eure, merit attention above all. In 1832 they shaded 

 with their foliage the whole of the field of the dead 

 ami a part of the church, without having expe- 

 rienced serious damage, when an extremely violent 

 windstorm threw a part of their branches to the 

 ground. In spite of this mutilation these two yews 

 are still majestic old trees. Their trunks, entirely 

 hollow, measure each of them nine meters in 

 cii- inn!, i, nee. Their age is estimated at fourteen 

 hundred years. 



