168 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
choked in its earliest growth by the surrounding trees. ‘The 
two outer circles only were sap wood, and they were the broad- 
est circles of all. In every instance save one, the inner circles 
were considerably the narrowest. The inference is, that, in the 
old forests, the chestnut grows less rapidly for the first ten or 
fifteen years, after which it continues to increase in rapidity of 
growth till it is upwards of forty-five or fifty years old. Grow- 
ing from the stump, where the whole growth has been felled, it 
springs with excessive rapidity in the earlier years. 
The chestnut tree is not only one of the most rapid growers, 
but it attains a greatage. Someof the most remarkable trees of 
Europe are chestnut trees. On Mount A%tna is the famous Cas- 
tagno di cento cavalli, so called from its having sheltered a hun- 
dred mounted cavaliers. Brydone found this, in 1770, two 
hundred and four feet in circumference, and it had the appear- 
ance of five distinct trees. A century before, when seen by 
Kircher, they were united, so that probably it had been one 
tree. The Tortworth chestnut, in England, was fifty-two feet 
in girth in 1820, when measured by Strutt. Near Sanserre, in 
France, is a tree of more than ten feet in diameter at six {ect 
from the ground; it is supposed to be a thousand years old. 
The circumstances of our country are not favorable to the 
existence of large trees. Few of them attain a great size in 
the forest, and in few places have the largest of the forest been 
left standing. An old tree is standing near Meeting-house Pond, 
in Westminster, which measured fifteen feet two inches in cir- 
cumference at the ground, in 1839, but diminished rapidly, being 
but ten feet ten inches at four feet. An old, low tree, in the edge 
of Stow, between that town and Bolton, on the side of a hill, 
was fourteen feet two inches from two to five feet from the sur- 
face. Several remarkable trees were standing, in 1840, in the 
western part of Bolton. In July of that year, there was, on the 
land of Joseph Houghton, an old tree with an erect undivided 
trunk of forty or fifty feet and several large branches above, 
which measured twenty-one feet three inches at the surface, 
seventeen feet at three feet, and fifteen fect nine inches at six 
feet. Another measured twenty-two feet eight inches at the sur- 
face, seventeen feet six inches at three feet, fifteen feet six inches 
