12 
PINETUM BRITANNICUM. 
of one of these trees, viz., that known as the “ Old Maid.” This tree had been broken off by a storm at 
a height of 128 feet, and its base cut across now serves as a dancing floor. M. De la Rue measured the 
annual rings in the following way: a slip of paper was stretched across the diameter of the trunk, the 
annual rings being marked off with a pencil on the paper, according to the convenient method originally 
proposed by Augustus Pyramus de Candolle. He found that the diameter at the height of about six feet 
was 26 feet 5 inches. The entire height of the tree, before it was broken by the wind, was, approximately, 
350 feet. The number of rings was counted by M. De la Rue and his assistant, one going from the 
circumference to the centre, the other in the opposite direction. The one counted 1223 rings, the other 
1245. The mean of the two observations, which is no doubt nearly corredt, gives the tree an age of 1234 
years, which is not an extraordinary one for trees, especially Conifers. There are, for instance, Yew trees 
which date back from the Christian era. The Sequoias grow in a deep and rich soil, and their rate of 
growth appears to have been very uniform. Thus, on the slip of paper it might be seen that, at the age of 
400 to 500 years, the annual rings were still thick, while in ordinary trees the layer becomes thin at from 80 
to 120 years, according to the kind of tree and other circumstances. 
But although the individual specimens whose rings have been counted were only about 1200 years 
old, we do not think that it by any means follows that that is the extreme measure of the life of the tree. 
In the first place, there is no physical impossibility in their reaching a much greater age. The Yew trees 
above referred to are an evidence that allied trees do, and we think there is good ground for holding that 
the oldest Cedars in the grove at Lebanon exceed 2000 years in age. Besides this, there are Welling- 
tonias much larger than those whose rings have been measured. “The Father of the Forest,” above 
spoken of, was a third larger, and it seems only reasonable to infer, that he should have been at least a 
third older. The growth of the annual rings misleads us in our calculations of age only when it is mis¬ 
applied. They diminish in breadth as we go outwards. Therefore, if we take the outer rings, and, finding 
that so many occur in an inch, estimate the whole interior of the tree at the same rate, we must neces¬ 
sarily overrate their number; in the same way that we should equally underrate their number if we started 
from the centre and reckoned only from the breadth of a few of the inner rings. 
The tree, the breadths of whose rings are above given by Dr Torrey, measured 23 feet in diameter, 
and that by Professor de Candolle 26^, or about 75 feet in circumference. The girth of “ The Father of 
the Forest,” even as now left, is 110 or 112 feet. It therefore must have had a diameter of 1 R feet more 
than Dr Torrey’s, which, to equal it, would require a circlet of 6 feet additional to be applied all the 
way round the trunk of the tree. How many annual rings would it take to make up this additional 
diameter ? 
It is clear that if we take the rate of growth at which his tree was growing when cut down, that is, the 
outer rings, we shall not over-estimate the number; any that would have grown after them must have been 
smaller in breadth, not greater. We must, however, take it fairly; and as in it there was a sudden diminu¬ 
tion of adtive growth during the last hundred years, it having only grown an inch during that period, in 
opposition to about a foot in each of the previous hundred years for some centuries previously, we think it 
would be scarcely fair to take the inch as the standard for every future hundred years’ growth. We regard 
the inch in the final hundred rather as the indication that the tree had reached its maturity, and had, what 
in man is called, “stopped growingand we suppose that until it reached this period of decadence, it went 
on growing at the rate of a foot in a hundred years without allowing for any small addition after having 
stopped growing. This would give us upwards of 2000 years as the period of life of the “ Father of the 
Forest;” but as we have 100 years to add to Dr Torrey’s for an inch after cessation of adtive growth, 
some allowance of a similar nature should be made in this case too, which might bring its age up a few 
hundred years more. If we were to take that last 100 years’ growth as the normal rate after a tree had 
reached 25 feet in diameter, it would make the age of the “ Father of the Forest” 8200 years, or even 
more ; for, small as the breadth of the annual rings taken to start with is, they would still go on progres¬ 
sively diminishing ad infinitum. 
Dr 
