THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 91 



Linden." An old poem, which bears the date of 1408, informs 

 us, that " before the gate rises a Linden, whose branches are 

 sustained by sixty-seven columns." The number of these 

 columns, or pillars of stone, raised to support the heavy and 

 widely spreading branches, one of which extends horizontally 

 for more than a hundred feet, had increased to eighty-two 

 when the tree was visited by Evelyn, and to one hundred and 

 six when it was examined by Trembley. To these supports, 

 doubtless, its preservation is chiefly owing; as the tender 

 wood of the Linden could never sustain the enormous weight 

 of the limbs, or resist the force of the winds. These pillars 

 are nearly covered with inscriptions ; of which the most ancient 

 that was extant in Evelyn's time bore the date of 1551 ; but 

 the oldest now legible bears the arms of Christopher, Duke of 

 Wiirtemberg, with the date of 1558. At five or six feet from 

 the ground, the trunk is thirty-five and a half English feet in 

 circumference. If, therefore, it has grown at the actual rate 

 of the Freiburg Linden, it must nearly have reached its thou- 

 sandth anniversary. Or if, as in the case of the tree near 

 Morat, we allow a sixth of an inch per annum for the average 

 increase in diameter, its computed age would be a little over 

 800 years ; surely, a moderate estimate for a tree which was 

 called the Great Linden more than six centuries ago. 



No tree of temperate climates so frequently attains an ex- 

 traordinary size as the Plane, or Sycamore (Platanus) ; trunks 

 of forty or fifty feet in circumference being by no means un- 

 common in this country. The Oriental Plane offers many 

 equally striking instances in the south of Europe, particularly 

 in the Levant. The celebrated tree on the island of Cos, so 

 conspicuously seen from the channel on the Asiatic side, has 

 recently been beautifully figured in Allen's " Pictorial Tour 

 in the Mediterranean." 



But old trunks, both of Oriental and our own very similar 

 species, are always hollow, — mere shells ; hence, in the absence 

 of historical data, their age is only to be computed by their 

 rate of growth ; which is so rapid for the first century or two, 

 and, at the same time, the wood is so liable to decay, that the 

 Plane-tree is not likely to afford any instances of extreme 



