OF FOREST-TREES. 



197 



yards. This surmounts the famous Tilia of Zurich, in Switzerland ; and CHAP. III. 

 uncertain it is whether in any Tilicetum or Lime-walk abroad, it be con- '-'''v"'*-' 



siderably exceeded : yet was the first motive I had to view it, not so 

 much the largeness of the tree, as the general opinion that no man could 

 even name it ; but 1 found it to be a Tilia Foemina ; and (if the distinc- 

 tion of Bauhinus be admitted from the greater and lesser leaf) a Tilia 

 Platyphyllos, or Latifolia ; some leaves being three inches broad ; but 

 to distinguish it from others in the country, I called it Tilia Colossasa 

 Depehamensis." 



A Poplar-tree, not much inferior to this, he likewise informs me, grew 

 lately at Harling, by Thetford, at Sir William Gaudy's gate, blown 

 down by that terrible hurricane about four years since *. . leeo. 



Thus that learned person. From these instances, I am not apt so much 

 to admire what is pretended so mightily to exceed the refreshing shades 

 of some of our Oaks, Beeches, Elms, and other ample umbrages, if dili- 

 gently compared, as I am to impute it to what the younger Pliny 

 attributes to men's affecting novelties, that tanta sucirum rerum satietas, 

 aliarumque avkVitas. 



But here does properly intervene tlie Linden of Schalouse, in Swisse, 

 under which is a bower composed of its branches, capable of containing 

 three hundred persons sitting at ease ; it has a fountain set about with 

 many tables, formed only of the boughs, to which they ascend by steps, 

 all kept so accurately, and so very thick, that the sun never looks into it. 

 But this is nothing to that prodigious Tilia of Neustadt, in the Duchy 

 of Wirtemberg, so famous for its monstrosity, that even the city itself 

 receives a denomination from it, being called by the Germans Neustadt 

 ander grossen Linden, or Neustadt by the great Lime-tree. The circum- 

 ference of the trunk is twenty-seven feet four fingers ; the ambitus, or 

 extent of the boughs, four hundred and three, fere ; the diameter, from 

 south to north, one hundred and forty-five ; from east to west, one 

 hundred and nineteen feet ; set about with divers columns and monu- 

 ments of stone, (eighty-two in number at present, and formerly above 

 an hundred more,) which several princes and noble persons have adorned, 

 and celebrated with inscriptions, arms, and devices, and which, as so 

 many piUars, serve likewise to support the umbrageous and venerable 

 Volume II. C C 



