THE LINDEN OR BASSWOOD 235 



altered form of the old English lind. The tree was introduced 

 into England (Kent), some say by the Romans, which is not 

 improbable. Others place the date of its introduction as 

 late as 1590. 



Some individual trees grow to a great size and corresponding old 

 age. Ray mentions a European linden that was 48 feet in cir- 

 cumference, although this seems unusually large. The famous 

 linden that gave the town of Neuenstadt in Wiirttemberg the 

 appellation of "Neuenstadt an der grossen Linden," was 9 feet 

 in diameter. There is a record, how accurate it is hard to say,, 

 made in 1798 of a linden at Trous which was 51 feet in circumfer- 

 ence, and which was said to have been already a celebrated tree, 

 in 1424. Its age was estimated at 580 years. 



Many of our American streets are lined with lindens, more often 

 the European than our native form, and most of our larger eastern 

 cities have a Linden Avenue. Perhaps the two most famous ave- 

 nues of hndens, however, are those at Trinity College, at Cambridge 

 in old England, and "Unter den Linden" in Berlin. In the regions 

 more remote from the work-a-day world where wood carving is 

 not a lost art, linden wood is very largely used for this handicraft,, 

 and in backward countries like much of Russia, the bast or inner 

 bark of the linden is used in the manufacture of cords, fish nets and 

 similar articles. Bast mats made of this material are, or were 

 before Russia emerged from the necessity of working, a regular 

 article of commerce and largely exported. The American Indian 

 independently discovered this use for the inner bark or bast of our 

 species, and also utilized the easily worked wood for the making 

 of utensils, Longfellow narrating that all of the bowls at Hiawathas 

 wedding being of basswood, smoothly polished. 



The somewhat generalized range of the existing species and the 

 known fossil occurrences of the hndens are shown on the accompany- 

 ing sketch-map of the world. The number of fossil species is 

 inconsiderable, comprising not more than 30 known forms, which 

 is really a small number when one reflects on the countless cen- 

 turies that these trees have been represented in the forests of past 

 geological times, and the vast areas that they have ranged over 



