6f FOREST-TREES. 199 



the middle, the head of the tree curiously shaped. I say, I need not CHAP. in. 

 have charged this paragraph with half these, but to shew how much ^-'"""v"'^ 

 more the Lime-tree seems to be disposed to be brought into these 

 arborious wonders, than other trees of slower growth ; and yet I am told 

 of a White Thorn, at Worms in Germany, planted in the centre of the 

 quadrangle of the great church, whose branches, held up with stone, are 

 in circle fifty paces : several more occur, too tedious to recite. But 

 what is all this, take the most spreading of them, to what we shall shew, 

 whilst that of Neustadt comes not yet by forty feet near to the dimen- 

 sions of an Oak standing lately in Worksop Park, belonging to his Grace 

 the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England, spreading almost three 

 thousand yards square, and under the shade whereof, near a thousand 

 horse might commodiously stand at once. But, besides the gigantic 

 Lime-tree, there is likewise a White Thorn, brought (as the tradition 

 goes) a small twig out of Palestine, (mno 1470, by Eberhard, first Duke 

 of Wirtemberg, (and planted near Tubing, where he founded St. Peter's 

 Monastery,) the branches whereof being sustained by forty columns of 

 stone, is yet* a flourishing tree. It is probable, that of Glastonbury is * 1679. 

 of this kind, an^ above a thousand years ancienter, if the report be true. 

 At Forti grows a Filbert whose trunk is as big as three men's middles : 

 Near Essling is a Juniper-tree of almost two feet diameter in the lower 

 trunk, and very tall. These prodigies, with several more, we have from 

 Dr. Faber, physician to Frederic, Duke of Wirtemberg, and collected 

 by the late industrious Jesuit Schotti, in his Appendix ad hb. ii. De Mi- 

 rabilibus Miscellaneis. Nor may here that goodly Birch-tree be forgotten, 

 which growing in one of the courts of the palace of Augsburgh, is so 

 spreading, as that the branches will cover with its shade three hundred 

 and sixty-five tables, even as many as there are days in the year, as 

 Tavernier tells us in his Travels. Mr. Cook, in his ingenious and useful 

 Treatise, mentions a Witch Elm growing within these three or four years 

 in Sir Walter Baggot's park in the county of Stafford, which, after two 

 men had been five days' felling, lay forty yards in length, and was at the 

 stool seventeen feet diameter : it broke in the fall fourteen load of wood ; 

 forty-eight in the top : yielded eight pair of naves, eight thousand six 

 hundred and sixty feet of boards and planks : it cost ten pounds seven- 

 teen shillings the sawing ; the whole esteemed ninety-seven tons. This 

 was certainly a goodly stick ! . 



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