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He made two successful operations. These not 

 only required him to cut deeply into the old pine 

 and take out the borers, but he may also have 

 had to come back from time to time to dress 

 the wounds by devouring the ant-colonies which 

 may have persisted in taking possession of them. 

 The wounds finally healed, and only the splitting 

 of the affected parts revealed these records, all 

 filled with pitch and preserved for nearly nine 

 hundred years. 



Following this, an even tenor marked his life 

 for nearly three centuries. This quiet existence 

 came to an end in the summer of 1301, when a 

 stroke of lightning tore a limb out of his round 

 top and badly shattered a shoulder. He had 

 barely recovered from this injury when a violent 

 wind tore off several of his arms. During the 

 summer of 1348 he lost two of his largest arms. 

 These were large and sound, and were more than 

 a foot in diameter at the points of breakage. As 

 these were broken by a down-pressing weight or 

 force, we may attribute these breaks to accumu- 

 lations of snow. 



The oldest, largest portion of a tree is the short 



40 



