CELEBRATED TEEES. 163 



that given by Gilpin. In a statement of the girth — at 

 the ground — published in 1807, the measurement gives 

 seventy-eight feet. But, in the one published in 1842, in 

 Mr. Charles Bmpson's ' Descriptive Account ' of the Cow- 

 thorpe Oak, the Author of that work gives his own 

 measurement of the girth, at the ground, in the same year, 

 as being sixty feet only. The apparent discrepancy, how- 

 ever, in the two measurements is accounted for by the fact 

 of the projections near the base of the tree having been 

 covered with earth at some time during the half-century 

 preceding 1842. The Rev. Thomas White, of Oowthorpe 

 Rectory, in a letter to us dated the 2 7th of May last says : — 

 ' The outline of the dear old tree is very irregular at the 

 base/ and this circumstance, taken in conjunction with 

 the natural decay of an old tree, detracts, of com'se, from 

 the comparative value of recent admeasurements. Mr. 

 White adds : — ' I have been minister here nearly thirty-five 

 years, and I think the venerable tree has failed very much 

 in that time.' A year or two ago, he informs us, a wood- 

 ranger measured its present main branch and found it 

 contained two and a half tons of wood ! The age of this 

 specimen of sylvan magnificence is believed to be nearly 

 1650 years I The Swilcher Oak at Need wood in Stafford- 

 shire, is still a magnificent tree. In 1771 it was nineteen 

 feet round at six feet from the ground. It increased but 

 very slowly from that time to 1825, when it was exactly 

 twenty-one feet four inches and a half in girth at the same 

 distance from the ground. Sir T. D. Lauder, nine years later, 

 said that though still ' a fine, shapely, characteristic tree, 



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