18 



LETTERS ON TREES. 



natural term of life, their average natural height and 

 girth. On these points, I apprehend, we are left by 

 De Candole as much in the dark as before. His table 

 is simply a list of certain trees which, at the time they 

 were examined, had, or were supposed to have, at- 

 tained the ages specified. Many of them, doubtless, 

 were then alive, and not a few of them probably still 

 growing, if not in height, at least in thickness. Per- 

 adventure (the case is quite conceivable), according to 

 the theory of trees at present assumed to be the right 

 one, some of these trees had even exceeded the natural 

 age and size of their kind — had as far surpassed it as 

 Thomas Parr, who died at the age of 152, or Petratch 

 Zortan, who lived to the age of 184, exceeded the 

 natural age of the human species, — or as Charles 

 O'Brien, who stood 8 feet 4 inches, and Daniel Lam- 

 bert, of whose prodigious weight and bulk every one 

 has heard, exceeded the natural weight and size and 

 height of the race. In short, neither the table nor 

 the data of De Candole take any account of, or have 

 any bearing upon, the average natural duration or 

 size of trees. 



10. One other source of informiation yet remains — 

 the books which treat expressly of trees. Of such 

 there is a considerable number. It may suffice to 

 instance one of the best and most widely known — 

 Gilpin's Forest Scenery^ and the late Sir Thomas Dick 

 Lauder's edition of that work as being singularly 



