94 ESS A YS. 



vent our assigning the highest antiquity to a tree not origi- 

 nally indigenous to Sicily, but doubtless introduced from the 

 East. 



There are, however, some colossal Chestnuts upon Mount 

 Etna, with undoubtedly single trunks ; three of which, re- 

 cently measured, are found to have a circumference respec- 

 tively of fifty-seven, sixty-four, and seventy feet. Some gen- 

 eral idea of their age may perhaps be formed by a comparison 

 with other individuals, whose history is better known, such as 

 that at Sancerre, described by Bosc, .which, although only 

 thirty-three feet in girth at six feet from the ground, has been 

 called the " Great Chestnut of Sancerre " for six hundred 

 years ; or the celebrated " Tortworth Chestnut," which Strutt, 

 who in his " Sylva Britannica " has given a fine illustration 

 of its massive bole, considers as probably the largest as well 

 as the oldest tree standing in England, and which in the 

 reign of Stephen, who ascended the throne in 1135, was 

 already remarkable for its size, and well known as a signal 

 boundary to the manor of Tamworth, now Tortworth, in 

 Gloucestershire. But even this tree, although it has probably 

 long since celebrated its thousandth anniversary, does not 

 equal the smallest of the three Sicilian Chestnuts, being only 

 fifty-two feet in circumference at five feet from the ground. 



In the ascending scale of longevity, we pass from the Chest- 

 nut to the Oak, the emblem of embodied strength, one of the 

 longest-lived, as it is the slowest-growing, of deciduous-leaved 

 forest trees. The light and soft wood of the Linden, and 

 even of the Chestnut, seems incompatible with great longevity. 

 Such trees of eight hundred or a thousand years old are 

 extraordinary phenomena, owing their prolonged existence to 

 a rare conjunction of favorable circumstances, — the more 

 important, as they are unexpected witnesses to the truth of 

 our leading proposition. But this is no very uncommon age 



for that 



"Lord of the woods, the long-surviving Oak." 



The briefest biographical notice of Oaks remarkable for 

 their age or size, or for historic memorials attesting their 

 antiquity, would alone fill our pages. We can only refer the 



