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~ dom flowers under thirty or forty years ; the Scotch fir antl Bi 
larch, on the other hand, produce cones in ten or twelve — 
years ; the oak and beech, again, only flowering when they — i 
have attained a considerable age. The Scotch and spruce-fir 
attain their full height, as a rule, in from 80 to Ioo years, 
while the silver-fir requires a longer period. The annual — 
rings of the beech usually become less distinct after 130 
or 150 years, while the regular increase of the oak in girth 
does not diminish till it is 150 or even 200 years old ; and ~ 
in the sweet chestnut the increase continues for at least 
double that period im the south of Europe. Probably the 
oldest lme-tree in Germany, at Neustadt on the Kocher, 
was celebrated in song as long ago as the year 1408; and 
the silver-firs on the Wurzelberg in the forest of Thuringia 
must be, from the number of the annual rings in one of the 
oldest trunks, 600 years old. ‘The age of an oak at Breslau, 
more than 13 metres in girth at a height of 26 metres, is 
estimated at 700 years. The old rose-stock in the crypt of 
the cathedral at Hildesheim was planted, according to tra- 
dition, by Louis the Pious; and the old dragon’s-blood — 
tree at Orotava in Madeira, is said to have been as vigorous— 
and even to have been hollow—in 1402, when the island was 
taken by the Spaniards, as in 1868, when it was blown 
down ina storm. All previous conceptions of the size and 
age of trees are enormously exceeded by the facts ascer- 
tained respecting the Seguoza (Wellingtonia) gigantea, the 
‘mammoth-tree’ of California, the largest measured speci- 
men of which gives a diameter of 10 and a height of r20 
metres, and, judging from the number of its annual rings, an 
age of from 3,000 to 4,000 years. The bread-fruit-tree is 
said to attain an age of from 5,000 to 6,000 years; that of — 
the gigantic species of Hucalyptus of Austraha, from 130 to 
- 160 (?) metres in height, has not been ascertained. 
