350 OUR WOODLAND TREES. 
Oak. Indeed, it is known, that although the 
Chestnut produces good timber up to an age of 
from thirty-five to forty years, and may extend 
its limit of utility to a period of half a century, 
yet, after that age, the wood becomes very in- 
ferior, by the loosening of its texture, that super- 
venes after it has passed its jubilee. 
Yet the Chestnut lives to an enormous age; 
and, perhaps, the Tree of this species, which 
still exists on Mount Etna, is one of the oldest 
Trees in the world, as it is certainly one of the 
largest—for it reaches the enormous girth of 
two hundred and four feet! At first sight, this 
colossal Chestnut appears not like one Tree, but 
like a group of several, as part of the trunk has 
been broken away, and its interior is hollow, and 
large enough to find room for a flock of sheep, or 
to admit of two carriages driving abreast through 
it. This magnificent Tree still bears abundant 
fruit, and its collectors have built a hut within 
the trunk, the better to promote their proceed- 
ings. In England, though we have no Tree at all 
approaching in size to this vegetable colossus of 
Mount Etna, we have some noble specimens of 
