No. 133.] 395 



President Tallinadge. — What is the life ot chcsnut ? Our 

 Swamp Ash lives to fifty or sixty years, and attains a diameter of 

 three feet. 



Mr. Ilobinson.-^Our Sycamore, or Button Ball, Planted by our 

 worthy Deacon Lord — four saplings which he carried iu his hand 

 — are now four feet in diameter. 



Rev. Mr. Carter. — Saw the sills and lintels qf the present Post 

 Office, some ye^rs ago, when it was undergoing repair; they were 

 white oak and in perfect preservation, yet they were there from 

 the building of that church, (formerly,) long before the Revolu- 

 tionary war, during which the British army used it as a riding 

 school. 



Judge Van Wyck. — I should like to have htard some "more 

 definite information about the age of some of our American forest 

 trees than we have had. Although the question has only been 

 introduced incidentally in discussing some other matters, that had 

 priority among those which are regularly before us, it might be 

 inferred from what has been intimated by several, that American 

 forest trees generally were much shorter lived than they were in 

 the old world. Among a few others, the chesnut vesca casianea 

 was mentioned. 



This tree, it was said, lived considerably short of a hundred 

 years ; there may be cases of this, and of all other trees ; these 

 decay and die sometimes from disease, or being planted in a soil 

 and climate not suitable to it ; animals are subject to this as well 

 as plants ; they get diseased from bad care, bad food, and various 

 causes, and die before maturity. I have seen chestnut trees in 

 healthy situations said to be over a hundred years old, and bear- 

 ing fruit, and I fully believed it, from the way in which the tes- 

 timony came, handed down from father to son. This is almost 

 the only way, in our young country, in which we can get a cor- 

 rect history of the age of trees ; in the old world, many of their 

 aged trees are identified in some degree with the history of the 

 country or nation where they grew ; Ihey were so old, or so large 

 when such a battle was fought, or such a king reigned, (by-the- 

 bye, I hope the age of none of our trees will ever be proved by 



