THE SWEET CHESTNUT 43 
local importance—having bcen built inside it. 
Supposing each annual ring of wood to be a line 
in thickness, a fair estimate for an unsplit tree, 
the circumference of this giant of the forest would 
indicate from 3,600 to 4,000 years of life. Other 
trees in the neighbourhood of Etna, where Chest- 
nuts are cultivated with great care, approach the 
dimensions of the giant; and, among other his- 
torical trees on the Continent, one in the depart- 
ment of Cher, in France, is noticeable as having 
been celebrated as a large tree for five or six 
centuries, though only thirty feet round. 
Though the rope-like stems and glossy foliage 
of the Chestnut are more familiar objects in the 
sunny south, whilst with us the tree is most 
commonly seen as mere coppice-wood, we are not 
without our giant specimens, which, no doubt, 
have had great weight in the minds of those who 
have claimed this species as a native of Britain, 
such as John Evelyn, the immortal author of 
“Sylva.” In Earl Ducie’s park at Tortworth, in 
Gloucestershire, is the remnant of a tree spoken 
of as old in the time of King Stephen, as, in- 
deed, it’ might well be, even if the Chestnut be 
of Roman introduction. This Tortworth Chest- 
nut is portrayed in Strutt’s magnificent “Sylva 
Britannica,” having in 1766 a circumference of 
fifty, and in 1830 of fifty-two feet, at a height of 
five feet from the ground; but it is now a mere 
fragment. At Burgate, near Godalming, in Surrey, 
is a grove of some twenty splendid trees, two of 
which exceed nineteen feet in girth, their enormous 
