AGE OF TREES. 
43 
perhaps by many would be passed by unnoticed ; yet it 
is deserving of some regard, from the vegetable powers 
that have existed, and still continue in its trunk. The 
bole, at some very distant period, by accident or design, 
appears to have lost its leading shoot, and in conse- 
quence has thrown out several collateral branches : three 
remain, which have now grown into trees themselves 
existing in full vigor, and constituting a whole of much 
beauty. It is a characteristic specimen of an oak, with 
all the corrugations, twistings, furrows, and irregularities, 
which this tree with a free growth generally exhibits ; 
expanding its three vigorous arms to the Sun of Heaven 
with a pendent, easy dignity, that seems like an enjoy- 
ment of unrestrained liberty. We have no good criterion 
to regulate our judgment with regard to the age of trees 
of considerable antiquity. In young ones the rings of 
the wood will often afford a reasonable ground for 
opinion; but in old trees these marks are absorbed, 
obscured, or uncertainly formed, so as to be no suffi- 
cient guide. In particular cases, such as inclosure of 
waste or other lands, formation of parks and plantations, 
the times of planting are sufficiently recorded ; but 
generally speaking, neither oral tradition, nor written 
testimony, remains to indicate the period when a tree 
sprang up. This oak, however, from all the signs of age 
that it retains, must have existed as a sapling at some 
very distant day, and is the most undoubted relic of 
antiquity in the vegetable world that we possess. 
The elm, and the beach, in age, frequently present 
very decided vestiges of a former day ; but the oak of 
centuries has impressed upon it indelible characters of 
antiquity, and is a visible vetustum monumentum . The 
wreathings and contortions of its bark, even its once 
vigorous, but now sapless limbs, with their bare and 
bleached summits, stagdieaded and erect, maintain a 
regality of character which perfectly indicates the mon- 
arch of the forest, and which no other tree assumes. We 
have many accounts in different authors of the pro- 
digious size which the oak has attained in England ; 
but most of the trees, that have arrived at any vast cir- 
cumference, seem, like this our village oak, to have lost 
