334 
DECIDUOUS TREES. 
The above observations concerning the European sweet chest¬ 
nut, though in the main applicable to our own chestnut, are not 
entirely so; for we have seen some of the largest trees of the 
species in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, in soils which, if not 
alluvial, were at least of a character to bear grain. Still, these soils 
may be composed in part of the debris of the very rocks which the 
close observer above quoted has mentioned as essential to the 
growth of the tree. Michaux found the finest chestnut trees of 
the United States on the mountain slopes of the Carolinas. 
The chestnut is remarkable for its longevity and the immense 
size its trunk attains. On the Blight place in Germantown, near 
Philadelphia, are some grand specimens. One old trunk, the top 
of which is a ruin, is nine feet in diameter, with a horizontal 
branch, at six feet from the ground, three feet in diameter! The 
“elephant chestnut ” of the Hartshorn forest, Neversink Highlands, 
New York harbor, is a grand specimen, said to be five hundred 
years old. In the grounds of Moses Brown, School Lane, Ger¬ 
mantown, Pa., is an immense chestnut, formed of three trunks, 
grown into one at the base, which measures nearly ten feet in 
diameter one way, and upwards of five feet the other. Its height 
is about ninety feet, and its branches cover an area nearly one 
hundred feet in diameter ; yet Mr. Brown informed us that the 
tree is probably not more than one hundred years old! At New¬ 
ton Centre, Mass., on the Rice estate, is one of the grandest 
chestnuts in New England; height nearly eighty feet, spread of 
limbs ninety-three feet, and girth of trunk at the base twenty-five 
feet. 
But the greatest of our American chestnuts are small in trunk 
compared with some of the famous old specimens of the same 
species in Europe and Asia. In England there are larger trees 
than our own, notwithstanding the nuts do not ripen so well there. 
The Studley Park chestnut, twenty-one years ago, was one hun¬ 
dred and twelve feet high, seven and a half feet in diameter of 
trunk, and ninety-one and a half feet across its branches ; and at 
Croft Castle, in Herefordshire, there is one eighty feet high, one 
hundred and twelve feet across its branches, and eight and a half 
feet diameter of trunk. The trunks of chestnut trees continue to 
