38 SYLVA BOOK m 



trees ; there was standing an old and decay'd chesnut 

 at Fraiting in Essex, whose very stump did yield thirty 

 sizable load of logs ; I could produce you another of 

 the same kind in Gloucestershire, which contains 

 within the bowels of it a pretty wainscotted room 

 inlighten'd with windows, and furnish'd with seats,G?c. 

 to answer the Lician platdnus lately mentioned. 



i o. But whilst I am on this period ; see what a tilia 

 that most learn'd and obliging person Sir Tho.Brown of 

 Norwich describes to me in a letter just now receiv'd. 



" An extraordinary large and stately tilia ^ linden^ or 

 lime-tree, there groweth at Depeham in Norfolk, ten 

 miles from Norwich, whose measure is this. The 

 compass in the least part of the trunk or body about 

 two yards from the ground, is at least eight yards and 

 half : about the root nigh the earth, sixteen yards, 

 about half a yard above that, near twelve yards in 

 circuit : The height to the uppermost boughs about 

 thirty yards, which surmounts the famous tilia of Zu- 

 rich in Switzerland; and uncertain it is whether in any 

 tilicetum^ or lime-walk abroad it be considerably ex- 

 ceeded : Yet was the first motive I had to view it not 

 so much the largeness of the tree, as the general 

 opinion that no man could ever name it ; but I found 

 it to be a tilia femina ; and (if the distinction of 

 Bauhinus be admitted from the greater, and lesser leaf) 

 a tilia platyphyllos or latifolia ; some leaves being three 

 inches broad ; but to distinguish it from others in the 

 country, I call'd it Tilia colossaea Depehamensis. " Thus 

 that learned person, from this and the like instance, 

 (as the reader will find in what follows growing in 

 our own country ;) I am not apt so much to admire 

 what is pretended so mightily to exceed the refreshing 

 shades of some of our oaks, beeches, elms, and other 



