ILLUSTRATIONS (12). GREAT AGE AND SIZE OJ TBEES. 275 



travels (bd. i. s. 268) only 36 and 38 feet in circumference, 

 and not in diameter, as has often been erroneously maintained. 

 The Buddhists of Ceylon venerate the colossal trunk of the 

 sacred fig-tree of Anurahdepura. The Banyan, which takes 

 root by its branches, often attains a thickness of 30 feet, and 

 forms, as Onesicritus truly expresses himself, a leafy roof 

 resembling a many-pillared tent.* On the Bombax Ceiba 

 see early notices from the time of Columbus in Bembo.f 



Among those oak trees which have been very accurately 

 measured, the largest in Europe is undoubtedly the one near 

 Saintes on the road to Cozes, in the Department de la Charente 

 inferieure. This tree, which has an elevation of 64 feet, mea- 

 sures very nearly 30 feet in diameter near the ground, while 5 

 feet higher up it is nearly 23 feet, and where the main branches 

 begin more than 6 feet. A little room, from 10 feet 8 inches to 

 12 feet 9 inches in width and & feet 7 inches in height, has 

 been cleared in the dead part of the trunk, and a semicircular 

 bench cut within it from the green wood. A window givea 

 light to the interior, and hence the walls of this little room, 

 which is closed by a door, are gracefully clothed with fern& 

 and lichens. From the size of a small piece of wood that 

 had been cut out over the door, and in which two hundred 

 ligneous rings were counted, the age of the oak of Saintes 

 must be estimated at 1800 or 2000 years.J 



With respect to the rose-tree (Rosa canina) reputed to be a 

 thousand years old, which grows in the crypt of the Cathedral of 

 Hildesheim, I learn from accurate information, based on authen- 

 tic records, for which I am indebted to the kindness of the Stadt- 

 gerichts- Assessor Homer, that the main stem only has an age 

 of eight hundred years. A legend connects this rose-tree with 

 a vow of the first founder of the cathedral, Louis the Pious ; and 

 a document of the eleventh century says, "that when Bishop. 

 Hezilo rebuilt the cathedral, which had been burnt down, 

 he enclosed the roots of the rose-tree within a vault still 



* Lassen, Indische Altherthumskunde, bd. i. s. 260. See an inte- 

 resting account of the Banyan tree in Forbes' Oriental Memoirs, vol. i. 

 pp. 25 28. The tree there described (the famous Cubbeer-Burr) 

 comprises 350 large trunks and more than 3000 small ones, and" 

 extends over an area of several thousand feet. Milton alludes to thfc 

 Banyan tree in his Paradise Lost, book ix. line 1100, &c. ED. 



f Historian Venetce, 1551, fol. 83. 



J Annales de la Societe d' Agriculture de la Rochette, 1843, p..aSQi. 



T 2. 



