SYLVAN GIANTS. 287 



Many travellers take notice of it. Brydone was 

 one of the last who saw it. His account is 

 dated about sixteen or seventeen years ago.' 

 (This was written in 1781.) ' It had then the 

 appearance of five distinct trees. The space 

 within them, he was assured, had once been filled 

 with solid timber, when the whole formed only 

 one tree. The possibility of this he could not at 

 first conceive, for the five trees together contained 

 a space of two hundred and four feet in circum- 

 ference.,, At length, however, he was convinced, 

 not .only by the testimony of the country, and 

 the accurate examination of the Canon Recupero, 

 a learned naturalist in those parts, but by the 

 appearance of the trees themselves, none of which 

 had any bark on the inside. This Chestnut is 

 of such renown,, that Brydone tells us he had 

 seen it marked in an old map of Sicily, published 

 a hundred years ago. (See Brydone's Trav. vol. i. 

 p. 117.),. Among other authors who mention this 

 tree, Ercher gives us the following account of its 

 condition in his day, which might be about a 

 century before Brydone saw it: " Qstendit mihi 

 vise dux, unius castanige corticem, tantae magni- 



