THE CHESNUT. 89 



ground, avoiding the spurs ; twenty-nine feet, at 

 three feet from the ground ; thirty-three feet at 

 twelve feet from the ground, and forty feet at the 

 point where the trunk divides. On looking at a tree 

 of this magnitude and antiquity, it is natural that 

 we should desire to know its exact age ; but this is 

 a point always of difficult and uncertain determina- 

 tion, unless some historical fact should give it chro- 

 nological precision. The common mode of judging 

 by the number of solar revolutions, or circles occa- 

 sioned by the bark of the preceding season being 

 digested and compacted into a ligneous substance, 

 and afterwards invested with a succeeding coat, 

 which is the next year to be converted in the same 

 manner into the substantial wood, is liable to inac- 

 curacy, on account of the earlier portion of the rings 

 becoming absorbed and indistinct by age ; nor is the 

 scale of comparison, with other trees of the same 

 species, more satisfactory ; for, as it has been re- 

 marked, the lives and stature of trees, like those of 

 animals, must vary with the situations in which they 

 are placed, and the accidents to which they may be 

 exposed. In general, the trees which in the end 

 obtain the greatest size, are the slowest in growth ; 

 it may therefore reasonably be inferred that the 

 age of our largest trees is often far beyond that as- 

 signed to them by obscure tradition or vague con- 

 jecture ; and it is not improbable that the " Four 

 Sisters" may have attained their tenth century. 



