96 ESS A YS. 



Chronicle," edited by Professor Lindley, we copy the follow- 

 ing account, which purports to have been extracted from the 

 Annals of the Agricultural Society of Rochelle. 



"At about six miles west-southwest of Saintes (in the 

 Lower Charente) near the road to Cozes, stands an old Oak- 

 tree, in the large court of a modern mansion, which still 

 promises to live many centuries, if the axe of some Vandal 

 does not cut it down. The following are the proportions of 

 this king of the forests of France, and probably of all Europe. 

 The diameter of the trunk at the ground is from nine to ten 

 yards [consequently its circumference is from eighty-five to 

 ninety-four feet] ; at the height of a man, from six and a half 

 to seven and a half yards [from sixty to sixty-seven feet in 

 circumference] ; the diameter of the whole head, from forty 

 to forty-three yards ; the height of the trunk, eight yards ; the 

 general height of the tree, twenty-two yards. A room has 

 been cut out of the dead wood of the interior of the trunk, 

 measuring from nine to twelve feet in diameter, and nine feet 

 high ; and they have cut a circular seat out of the solid wood. 

 They put a round table in the middle, when it is wanted, 

 around which twelve guests can sit. A door and a window 

 admit daylight into this new sort of dining-room, which is 

 adorned by a living carpet of Ferns, Fungi, Lichens, etc. 

 Upon a plate of wood taken from the trunk about the height 

 of the door, two hundred annual rings have been counted, 

 whence it results, in taking a horizontal radius from the ex- 

 terior circumference to the centre of the oak, that there must 

 have been from 1800 to 2000 of these rings ; which makes its 

 age nearly two thousand years." 



We should have been told, however, from what portion of 

 the radius this block was taken. If near the circumference, 

 where the rings are the narrowest, the age of the tree has 

 been over-estimated ; perhaps not materially so, as it must 

 have been growing at a slow and nearly equable rate for 

 many centuries ; if towards the centre, the computed age is 

 within the truth. To this tree, therefore, as being probably 

 the patriarch of the species in Europe, may well be applied 

 the lines addressed by Cowper -to the Yardley Oak : — 



