ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 93 



Braborne, in the comity of Kent, thirty centuries; to the 

 Scotch yew of Fortingal, from twenty-five to twenty- six; 

 and to those of Crowhurst in Surrey, and Eipon in York- 

 shire, respectively, fourteen and a half and twelve centuries. 

 (Decandolle, de la longevite des arbres, p. 65.) Endlicher 

 remarks that the age of another yew tree, in the Churchyard 

 of Grasford, in North "Wales, which measures 52 English 

 feet in circumference below the branches, is estimated at 

 1400 years, and that of a yew in Derbyshire at 2096 years. 

 In Lithuania lime trees have been cut down which were 

 87 English feet in circumference, and in which 815 annual 

 rings have been counted." (Endlicher, Grundziige der Bo- 

 tanik, S. 399.) In the temperate zone of the southern 

 hemisphere some species of Eucalyptus attain an enormous 

 girth, and as they also reach to a great stature (above 230 

 Paris, 245 English, feet), they are singularly contrasted 

 with our yew trees, whose great dimension is in thickness 

 only. Mr. Backhouse found in Emu Bay, on the coast of 

 Van Diemen Land, trunks of Eucalyptus which measured 

 70 English feet round the trunk near the ground, and five 

 feet higher up 50 English feet. (Gould, Birds of Australia, 

 "Vol. I. Introd. p. xv.) 



It is not, as is commonly stated, Malpighi, but the 

 ingenious Michel Montaigne, who has the merit of having 

 been the first, in 1581, in his Voyage en Italic, to notice 

 the relation of the annual rings to the age of the tree. 

 (Adrien de Jussieu, Cours elementaire de Botanique, 1840, 

 p., 61.) A skilful artist, engaged in the preparation of 

 astronomical instruments, had called the attention of Mon- 



