186 A DISCOURSE 



BOOK III. does> in another chapter of the same treatise, speak of the age of trees. 



^"^"^^"^^ The discourse is both learned, rational, and full of encouragement ; for 

 he does not scruple to affirm, that even some fruit-trees may possibly ar- 

 rive to a thousand years of age ; and if so, fruit-trees, (whose continual 

 bearing does so much impair and shorten their lives, as we see it does 

 their form and beauty,) how much longer might we reasonably imagine 

 some hardy and slow-growing forest-trees may probably last ? I remember 

 Pliny tells us of some Oaks growing in his time in the Hercynian forest 

 which were thought coevous with the world itself ; their roots had even 

 raised mountains, and where they encountered, swelled into goodly arches 

 like the gates of a city : but our modern author's calculation for 

 fruit-trees, (I suppose he means pears, apples, &c.) is three hundred 

 years for growth, as much for their stand, as he terms it, and three 

 hundred for their decay, which does in the total, amount to no less than 

 nine hundred years. This conjecture is deduced from Apple-trees grow- 

 ing in his orchard, which having known for forty years, and upon diligent 

 inquiry of sundry aged persons, of eighty years and more, who remem- 

 bered them trees all their time, he finds by comparing their growth with 

 others of that kind, to be far short in bigness and perfection, viz. by more 

 than two parts of three, yea, albeit those other trees have been much hin- 

 dered in their stature through ill government and misordering: and this to 

 me seems not at all extravagant, since I find mention of a Pear-tree, near 

 Ross, in Herefordshire, which being of no less than eighteen feet circum- 

 ference, and yielding seven hogsheads of cider yearly, must needs have been 

 of very long standing and age, though perhaps not so near Methuselah's. 



-To establish this, he assembles many arguments from the age of 

 animals, whose state and decay double the time of their increase by the 

 same proportion. " If then (saith he) those frail creatures, whose bodies 

 are nothing in a manner but a tender rottenness, may live to that age, 

 I see not but a tree of a solid substance, not damnified by heat or cold, 

 capable of, and subject to, any kind of ordering or dressing, feeding 



^ In eadem septentrionali plaga, Hercynige silvae roborum vastitas intacta aevis, et 

 congenita mundo, prope immortali sorte miracula excedit. Constat attolli colles occursan- 

 tium inter se radicura repercussu : aut ubi secuta tellus non sit, arcus ad ramos usque, et 

 ipsos inter se rixantes, curvari portarutn patentiura modo, at turmas eqiiitum transmittant. 

 Plin. 1. xvi. c. ii. 



