Old Trees

OLD trees are living epochs in the history of the world. Here have they stood for hundreds of years, some even for thousands, looking down upon the smiling earth; now battling with tempests, then basking in sunshine; steadily growing and strengthening and spreading, till at last, venerable in colossal grandeur, and clad with the livery of advancing age, they claim our reverence and inspire emotions of solemn awe. We think, as we look at them, of the lapse of time since the tender radicle first shot downward and the light plumule aspired heavenward; of the silent forces which have been at work in building them up. Year after year have they formed their buds and expanded their leaves; year after year have they shed the old and developed the new, and slowly but surely have the limbs lengthened and the trunk swollen, and the whole structure, solidly buttressed on every side, grown into symmetrical beauty and form.

Every part of the habitable globe can furnish its quota of venerable trees. It has been estimated that even now a third of the earth’s surface is covered with forests. In tropical climes, as on the banks of the Amazon, travelers are struck with the number and variety of ancient trees; in temperate regions immense tracts are covered with pines and oaks, cedars and walnuts, hemlocks and chestnuts, lindens and ashes, many of which are from twenty to eighty feet in circumference, and from one to three hundred feet in height; and farther to the north, to the outer verge of the Arctic Circle, the whole surface is covered with trees less gigantic in circumference and height, many of which are of great age.

The pine, whose image was stamped on the first silver shillings issued in Massachusetts, has a geographical range in America from the Saskatchawan to Georgia, and, beyond the Mississippi, from the sources of the Columbia to the Pacific slope. It grows in every part of New England and in every variety of soil, and it was formerly, as now, the principal tree of Massachusetts, although the older growths have mostly disappeared. Fifty years ago it was not uncommon to find pines six feet in diameter and two hundred and fifty feet in height, and masts have been made, on the Penobscot and in Canada, ninety feet in length and three feet in diameter at the smallest part. We have frequently seen sticks of this size on the shores of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, at Quebec and other ports, which were being loaded into vessels for England. The Worcester Palladium for July 3, 1844, gives an account of a tree cut in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, previous to the Revolution, from which a mast was hewn one hundred and ten feet long, and three feet in diameter at the upper end. The dimensions of the stump are not given, but it is said a yoke of large oxen were driven upon it and turned with ease, and that fifty-five yoke of oxen were required to draw the stick to tidewater.

Lambert’s pine, on the northwest coast, grows to the height of two hundred and thirty feet, and the Douglass pine, which is still larger, grows to the height of three hundred feet. Such trees, in the depths of the forest, are often objects of peculiar interest from the striking variety of vegetable life which they exhibit : lichens — dotted lecideas, lecanoras, and verrucarias — elosely invest the bark on the lower part of the trunk; star-like parmelias spread over them; green and purple mosses in the crannies, and tufts of stricta, rammalina, and usnea higher up. Quite often, indeed, the usnea barbata bangs pendent in large masses from the upper boughs in moist woods, trailing in the wind and giving to the trees in the dim twilight an exceedingly weird and ghostlike appearance. The estimated age of the most ancient of these trees is fourteen hundred years, and trees of the age of eleven hundred years are not uncommon. Many of the trunks are from twenty-seven to thirty-six feet in circumference, and rise to the height of one hundred and twenty feet without a limb.

On the continent of Europe, the Siberian pine, which grows quite extensively in Switzerland as well as in Russia, although not a large tree, attains often to a great age: a trunk nineteen inches in diameter presenting, when cut down, three hundred and fifty-three annual circles. The timber of this pine is of an agreeable perfume, and is much employed for domestic purposes as well as for wainscoting rooms ; it exhales its fragrance for centuries with undiminished strength and without any decrease of weight in the wood. The seeds are esteemed a great luxury, and are eaten in quantities at the winter festivals. Like all the coniferæ it is symmetrical in shape, but the branches, which are not long, incline upward and are somewhat contorted.

Nearly allied to the pine is the cypress, a tall and graceful plume-shaped tree, which attains in Europe to a great age and size, and which was celebrated in all antiquity for the incorruptibility of its wood and its funereal uses. The oldest tree on record is the Cypress of Somma, in Lombardy, figured by Loudon in his Arboretum. This tree is supposed by some to have been planted the year of the birth of Christ, and on that account it is regarded with great reverence; but an ancient chronicle at Milan is said to prove that it was a tree iu the time of Julius Cæsar, n. c. 42. It is one hundred and twenty-one feet high, and twenty-three feet in circumference at one foot from the ground. Napoleon, when laying down the plan for his great road over the Simplon, diverged from a straight line to avoid injuring this tree.

The American cypress, found in the Southern States, grows naturally in low grounds subject to annual inundations, and sometimes rises to the height of one hundred and twenty feet, with a circumference at the base of from twenty-five to forty feet. The roots, which run horizontally at a short depth below the surface, throw up conical protuberances or knees, sometimes four or five feet high, but usually smaller, smooth without and hollow within, looking not unlike mileposts, and serving, says Bartram, “ very well for bee-hives. ” These trees, with their streamers of long moss floating on the wind, are a curious feature in the scenery of the Southern States, and a cypress swamp is a somewhat formidable object to encounter. Some cypresses have been known to reach the age of six hundred and seventy years.

This tree, however, attains to its amplest development and age in the tierras templadas of Mexico; and one of the celebrated group in the garden of Chapultepee, called the Cypress of Montezuma, which was already a remarkable tree in the palmy days of that unfortunate monarch, nearly four hundred years ago, is forty-five feet in circumference, and of a height, in proportion to its size, so great that the whole mass appears light and graceful. But this tree, vast as it is, is greatly surpassed by the famous Ahuchute — the Mexican name for the species — of the village of Atlisco, in the intendancy of Puebla, which was first described by Lorenzana, and which, according to the worthy archbishop, “ might contain twelve or thirteen men on horseback in the cavity of the trunk.” Humboldt says the girth of the tree is twenty-three metres, or seventy-six English feet, and the diameter of the cavity is sixteen feet.

Still more gigantic, however, than this— the Nestor of the race, indeed, if not of the whole vegetable kingdom — is the cypress which stands in the church-yard of the village of Santa Maria del Title in the intendancy of Oaxaca, on the road to Guatemala by the way of Tehuantepec, which, according to Humboldt, is thirty-six metres, or one hundred and eighteen English feet in circumference. In its immediate vicinity are five or six other trees of the same species, each of which is nearly as large as the Cypress of Montezuma; but this tree as much surpasses the rest as they surpass the ordinary denizens of the forest. It still shows no signs of decay, although it bears less foliage in proportion to its size than its younger fellows.

Recent travelers speak of other trees near the ruins of Palenque equal in size to the splendid tree at Santa Maria del Tule, and the estimate of the age of these trees is from four to six thousand years; perhaps dating back to the beginning of the earth’s historic period! Imagination is lost in picturing the possibility even of such longevity; yet if any reliance can be placed upon estimates sanctioned by the opinion of the most eminent naturalists, we have here trees which have witnessed the gradual rise, the steady progress, the final decline, and even the extinction of a race whose history has sunk into oblivion, while the trees themselves are still alive!

The yew is also allied to the pine, and is of slower growth and greater durability than any other European tree; thus supporting the opinion first advanced by De Candolle, and now concurred in by most physiologists, that exogenous trees are by their nature of indefinite growth, and never die except by a violent death. Indeed, a yew,

is, as Wordsworth truly says,

Of the many trees of this species to be found in England, one is mentioned which formerly stood in Braburne church-yard, in the county of Kent, which was more than sixty feet in circumference, and its age was computed at twenty-five hundred years. A second still stands in the woods of Cliefden called the Hedron Yew, healthy and vigorous, over eighty feet in circumference, and three thousand years old. The famous yews of Fountain’s Abbey, near Ripon, Yorkshire, were in full vigor when the abbey was founded in 1132 by Thurston, Archbishop of York; and of the seven trees of which history speaks, one measured twenty-six feet and six inches in circumference at the height of three feet from the ground, and the whole seven stood so near each other as to form a cover almost equal to a thatched roof. The age of the largest is fixed at twelve hundred years.

The fine yew at Dryburgh Abbey, which is supposed to have been planted when the abbey was founded, in 1136, and which is in full health and vigor, has a trunk only twelve feet in circumference. The Arkernyke Yew, near Staines, which witnessed the conference between the English barons and King John, and in sight of which Magna Charta was signed, measures twentyseven feet and eight inches in circumference, and is supposed to be between eleven and twelve hundred years old. It was beneath this tree that Henry VIII., by the Grace of God Defender of the Faith, etc., first saw gospel light in the fair eyes of Anne Boleyn. The Darley Yew, in Derbyshire, which is twenty-nine feet and two inches in circumference, is estimated to be nearly fourteen hundred years old; and the yew in Tisbury church-yard, Dorsetshire, which is thirty-seven feet in circumference, is estimated to be sixteen hundred years old. The yew in Fortingal church-yard, Perthshire, Scotland, situated in a wild district among the Grampians, is fifty-six feet in circumference, and is estimated to be more than twenty-five hundred years old.

Next to the yew we may mention the cedar; and although no very ancient specimens exist in America, in portions of Asia, especially in the Levant, are trees invested with a sacred interest from the fact that they were living in Old Testament times, hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The grove on Mount Lebanon, so often alluded to in Holy Writ, was first described in modern times by Belon, who visited it about the year 1550. The cedars of this grove were then, as now, highly venerated by the Maronite Christians, who firmly believed them to be coeval with Solomon, if not planted by his hand; and they made an annual pilgrimage to the spot at the festival of the Transfiguration, the patriarch celebrating high mass under the shade of one of the oldest trees, and anathematizing all who should presume to injure these sacred relics. The larger trees of the grove were measured and described by Rauwolf, an early German traveler, in 1574; by Thévenot in 1655; more particularly by Maundrell in 1696; by La Roque in 1722 ; by Dr. Pococke, in 1744; by Labillardière in 1787; and by M. Laure, an officer of the French marine, who visited them with the Prince de Joinville, in 1836. Formerly, from twenty to thirty of the trees were standing; more recently there were seventeen; still more recently, only twelve; and now we believe there are but seven. We have in our possession a small section from a limb of one of these trees, which we prize highly for its venerable associations.

Of the soft-wood trees of tropical climes, some attain to a great age and size. Thus, the palo de vaca or cow tree of South America, found in the Cordilleras, in Venezuela and Caraccas, grows to the height of a hundred feet, and is often seven feet in diameter. Humboldt describes it as a handsome tree resembling the broad-leaved star apple; and says that when incisions are made in the trunk a glutinous milk abundantly issues, of a pleasing and balmy smell, rich and thick though not bitter, and mixed with coffee it could scarcely be distinguished from animal milk.

The banian, or Indian fig, commonly called the peepul - tree, is constantly planted by the Hindoo temples: —

The roots or props thrown out from the main trunk occupy such a space that one growing on the banks of the Nerbuddah covers an almost incredible area. The circumference which now remains is nearly two thousand feet, and the overhanging branches which have not yet thrown down their props overshadow a much larger space. Three hundred and twenty large trunks are counted, and the smaller ones exceed three thousand. Each is continually sending forth new branches and pendent roots, to form other trunks and become the parent of a future progeny. According to Forbes’s Oriental Memoirs, the whole has been known to shelter beneath its shade a company of at least seven thousand men.

The baobab, or monkey bread, another tropical tree, found in the Cape Verd Islands and at Senegal, has long afforded celebrated instances of longevity. This tree is remarkable for its small height in comparison with the diameter of its trunk or the length of its branches; trunks of seventy or eighty feet in circumference being only ten or twelve feet high. The branches, however, are very numerous, often fifty or sixty feet in length, spreading widely in every direction, and forming a hemisphere or hillock of verdure sometimes one hundred and fifty feet in diameter. The history of these trees, rendered famous by Adamson’s account, reaches back to the first discovery of that part of the African coast, and of the Cape Verd Islands, by Cadamosto, in 1455. The largest trunks were twenty-seven feet in diameter, or eighty-five feet in circumference. More recently, M. Perrottet has met with many baobabs in Senegambia, varying from sixty to ninety feet in circumference, green and flourishing, and showing no signs of approaching decrepitude. By some, these trees are regarded as among the oldest in existence on our globe, and their age is estimated by the younger De Candolle at five or six thousand years!

The famous dragon-tree furnishes another instance of great longevity. One of these trees, found near the city of Orotava, Teneriffe, has been visited by many competent observers, — among others by Humboldt,— and from their statements it appears that the trunk is about fifty feet in girth, and sixty or seventy feet in height. At the discovery of Teneriffe, in 1402, nearly five centuries ago, this tree was about as large as it is to-day; and even then it had been immemorially an object of veneration among the Guanches. Since that period it has been hollowed by decay, and shorn of part of its top; still it continues to vegetate, and its remaining branches are annually covered, as they have been for thousands of years, with beautiful clusters of white, lily-like blossoms, emblems of the eternal youth of nature.

Of the hard-wood trees, the oak unquestionably stands at the head of those growing in the temperate zone, and it is justly regarded as the monarch of the forest. Virgil calls it —

The ancient Pelasgians believed that a deity dwelt in their oak groves, whom they feared and worshiped. The oracle of Dodona was situated in an oak grove; and to the inhabitants of Britain and Gaul, under the Druids, the oak was still more sacred. Oak groves were their temples, and the mistletoe, which hung from its boughs, was their favorite wand. For the fullest account of this magnificent tree, which grows in nearly every part of the world, we must refer to the works of Evelyn and Gilpin, Strutt and Loudon, who have devoted pages instead of paragraphs to its consideration. It is not uncommon to find in Massachusetts oak-trees from twelve to twenty feet in circumference, and from four to fourteen hundred years old. In the town of Brighton is the picturesque ruin of a white oak, nearly twenty-six feet in circumference, hollow at the base, and easily entered by men and boys. This tree is supposed to have passed its prime centuries before the first English voice was heard on our shores, and it is still clad with abundant foliage. In South Scituate, near Jacobs’s mill, is another white oak, eighteen feet in circumference at the ground, and from four to six hundred years old. This tree,

promises to outlast the noble elms growing near it. The oak under which the apostle Eliot preached to the Indians at South Natick, in 1690, is still standing, a “ hale, green tree,” and yet affords a grateful shade to the weary traveler.

The celebrated Charter Oak, of Hartford, Connecticut, which was prostrated in the storm of August, 1854, is said to have been thirty-six feet in circumference at the ground, and its age was estimated at eight hundred years. The Wadsworth Oak, of Genesee, New York, lived to a great age, and at the time of its destruction, in 1857, was estimated to be at least a thousand years old. Its circumference was about twenty-seven feet, and it was a fair counterpart of Spenser’s tree: —

Of the oaks of Europe, some of the most noted are the King’s Oak, in Windsor Forest, which is more than a thousand years old, and quite hollow. Professor Burnet, who once lunched inside this tree, said it was capable of accommodating ten or twelve persons comfortably at a sitting. The Beggar’s Oak, in Bagshot Park, is twenty feet in girth at five feet from the ground, and the branches extend from the trunk forty-eight feet in every direction. The Wallace Oak, at Ellerslie, near where Wallace was born, is twenty-one feet in circumference; and Wallace and three hundred of his men are said to have hid from the English army among its branches when the tree was in full leaf. The Parliament Oak, in Clipstone Park, which is supposed to be the oldest in England, derives its name from the fact that a parliament was held under its branches by Edward I., in 1290, at which time it was a large tree. The oak in Yardley Chase, immortalized by Cowper, is also a conspicuous and venerable relic. The Winfarthing Oak, now a bleached ruin, is said to have been an old tree at the time of the Norman Conquest, in the eleventh century. The Greendale Oak, in the Duke of Portland’s Park, at Walbeek, is described by Evelyn and figured by Hunter, with its trunk pierced by a lofty arch, through which carriages have been driven. The Conthorpe Oak, in Yorkshire, measures seventy-eight feet in circumference, and its age is estimated at eighteen hundred years. The Great Oak of Salcey Forest, Northamptonshire, a picturesque wreck, is supposed to be of equal antiquity.

On the Continent, an oak was felled at Bordza, in Russian Poland, some forty years ago, upon which seven hundred and ten consecutive layers were distinctly counted, and the space in which the layers could not be counted was estimated to contain three hundred more, making the whole age of the tree a thousand years. Near Saintes, in France, an oak is standing which is said to be upwards of ninety feet in circumference. A room has been cut out of the dead wood of the interior, about twelve feet in diameter, and a round table has been placed in it, at which twelve guests can be seated at once. The full age of the tree is estimated at two thousand years.

Next to the oak in size and popularity must be ranked the elm, which is found all over the United States, and in Europe. Few trees, indeed, are more common in the temperate zone than this; and although it rarely grows in large bodies, like the pine and spruce, it is frequently found in the Canadian woods interspersed with ashes and maples of venerable size, and growing to the height of from eighty to one hundred feet, with a smooth stem to the height of from forty to sixty feet. Few sights are grander than those old forests, back from the Ottawa, stretching to the northward undisturbed for hundreds of miles, with giant pines and enormous hemlocks completely concealing and shading the earth.

The elm in Massachusetts is a favorite tree, and may be found planted by nearly all old mansions. Every town has its memorable trees of this kind ; and they grow in many places from eighty to a hundred feet high, and with a circumference of from twelve to thirty feet. The famous elm on Boston Common is twenty-four feet in circumference, and on a map of Boston published in 1720 it is delineated as a large tree. It is said to have been planted by Captain Daniel Henchman, an ancestor of Governor Hancock, in 1670, and is now two hundred years old. The Washington Elm, in Cambridge, is another classic tree, and is nearly sixteen feet in circumference at the base. The Pittsfield Elm, greatly revered by the inhabitants of that town, was one hundred and twenty-six feet high, and thirteen feet in circumference at the height of four feet from the ground. The Aspinwall Elm, in Brookline, now more than two hundred years old, is nearly twenty-one feet in circumference, and its branches are one hundred feet long. The elm in Hingham, near the Old Colony House, which was transplanted in 1729, is thirteen feet in circumference at four feet from the ground. The Springfield Elm, according to Dr. Holmes, is over twenty-nine feet in circumference at the base; a tree is mentioned in Hatfield which is forty-one feet in circumference at the base; and another in Medfield is over thirty-seven feet iu circumference. An elm in Wakefield, in front of the residence of James Eustis, Esq., measures twenty-one feet at the ground; the Sheffield Elm is nearly twenty-three feet in circumference; and there are hundreds of trees of-equal size and age scattered abroad throughout our villages.

The European elm is somewhat different from that of America; and Strutt, in his Sylva Britannica, gives engravings of several of the most remarkable. Among these, the finest is the Chipsted Elm, which is twenty feet in circumference at the ground, and sixteen feet at the height of four feet. Its venerable trunk is richly mantled with clustering ivy, and gives signs of considerable age. The Crawley Elm, on the high-road from London to Brighton, measures sixty-one feet in circumference at the ground, and is a well-known object of interest to travelers, with its tall, straight stem, and the fantastic ruggedness of its widespreading roots. For several centuries this species of elm has been planted for ornament on avenues and public parks in France, Spain, and the Low Countries, and in England immemorially. It is less graceful than the American elm, and more sturdy and spreading in its form; but it has the advantage of retaining its foliage for several weeks longer than our native tree. Fine specimens are found in this country, in Boston and its vicinity.

The linden is a native of America and Europe, and in both countries attains to a great size and age. The celebrated sycamore maple which stands near the entrance of the village of Trons, in the Grisons,— the cradle of liberty among the Rhœtian Alps, —was once called a linden, and under its spreading branches the Gray League was solemnized in 1424. Its age is estimated at six hundred years. The true linden is a favorite with the Swiss, and is intimately associated with important events in the history of that people. The linden at Freiburg, planted in 1476 to commemorate the battle of Morat, is still standing, and though beginning to decay, has already proved a more durable monument than the famous ossuary on that battle-field,

Another tree, standing at the village of Villars-en-Moing, near Morat, was a noted tree four centuries ago, and at four feet from the ground it has a circumference of thirty-eight feet. Its full age is computed at nine hundred years. The still more celebrated linden of Neustadt on the Kocher, in Würtemberg, is equally old, and was a remarkable tree at the opening of the thirteenth century; for the village of Helmbundt, which was destroyed in 1226, was subsequently rebuilt in the vicinity of this tree, and thence took the name of Neustadt an der grossen Linden. From an old poem, written in 1404, it appears that even then the tree was of such size, and the spread of its branches was so enormous, that their weight was sustained by sixty-seven columns of stone. At six feet from the ground the circumference of the tree is thirty-six English feet, and its age is computed at nine hundred years.

The chestnut - tree, found in Europe and America, also lives to a good old age. In this country, large specimens are occasionally found, and many are mentioned by Mr. Emerson, in his Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts, from fourteen to twenty-six feet in circumference, the largest of which must be from four to six hundred years old. But great as these are, they are thrown into the shade, and seem like pigmies, beside the enormous tree on Mount Etna, called the Castagna di cento cavalli, from the tradition of its having once sheltered in its hollow trunk one hundred mounted cavaliers under Jeanne of Aragon. Brydone, in his Tour in Sicily, described this tree in 1770, and says it was then two hundred and four feet in circumference, and had the appearance of five distinct trunks. Kircher, however, who saw the tree a century earlier, speaks of the five as united in one. An engraving of this tree, with its splendid top, is given in Plate LXXXVII. of Low’s American Encyclopedia, published in 1807.

Besides this, there are other colossal chestnuts on Mount Etna with undoubted single trunks ; and three of these, when measured a quarter of a century ago, had respectively a circumference of fiftyseven, sixty - four, and seventy feet. Their age is probably not far from fifteen hundred years; and the great tree is supposed to be from two thousand to twenty-five hundred years old. The Great Chestnut of Sancerre, France, described by Bose, has been called by that name for at least six hundred years; and as its girth is thirty-three feet at six feet from the ground, its full age is probably at least a thousand years. The same is true of the Great Chestnut of Totworth, in Gloucestershire, England, which is known to have been standing in 1150, and which is fifty-two feet in circumference at the ground. This tree fixes the boundary of the ancient manor, and its age is probably about twelve hundred years.

The black walnut is a native of America, and in the States bordering on the Ohio often grows to a great size. Michaux says he has frequently seen walnuts from six to seven feet in diameter; and we have measured stumps in Illinois which were from five to eight feet in diameter. Planks have been sawed from such trees five feet wide and thirty or forty feet long. When the walnut stands alone, it spreads out into a spacious head and extends its branches horizontally to a great distance; but in the depths of the forest it is of a more compact growth, and is often shorn of its limbs, and has a smooth bole to the height of from forty to sixty feet. The largest trees are probably from four to six hundred years old.

The walnut of Europe is equally venerable; and Galignani’s Messenger mentions one on the road from Martel to Grammont which is at least three hundred and fifty years old. Its height is fifty-five feet, and its diameter fourteen feet. Its branches, seven in number, extend to a distance of one hundred and twenty-five feet, and it bears on an average fifteen bags of nuts per annum.

The button-wood, or sycamore, the American plane, is often a venerable object to behold; and specimens may be found from six to seven feet in diameter, yet sound, notwithstanding the disease which attacked them so generally a third of a century ago, and which threatened for a time to sweep them entirely away. One formerly stood in the town of Wakefield, on land of John Tyler, which measured thirty feet in circumference at the ground. It was hollow within, and the opening was sufficient to permit four men to stand in it easily. Some mischievous boys built a fire in it one Sunday, and the tree burned all day; but the flames were extinguished, and subsequently the tree was felled; a portion of the trunk was removed to the Common, and a platform erected upon it, from which Hon. Henry Wilson, now Vice-President of the United States, and then just beginning his political career, delivered a stump speech in the Harrison campaign of 1841.

At a place called Vaueluse, near Newport, Rhode Island, a button-wood is described which, in 1839, measured twenty-four feet in circumference at the ground; and three miles from Hagerstown, Maryland, near Salem Church, a tree is standing which is thirty-nine feet in circumference at the ground, and the cavity within is eleven feet in diameter. A Mr. Gelwicks, with twenty scholars, from eight to seventeen years old, stood in a circle around this cavity. As the growth of the button-wood after a certain period is quite slow, it is probable that this tree is five or six hundred years old, and the others we have described were from two to four hundred years old.

The elder Michaux measured a tree on a small island in the Ohio, which was over forty feet in circumference at five feet from the ground. General Washington had measured the same tree twenty years before, and found it to be of nearly the same size. The younger Michaux found a tree in 1802 on the right bank of the Ohio, thirtysix miles from Marietta, which measured forty-seven feet in circumference at four feet from the ground. Either of these trees must have been at least six hundred years old.

The Oriental plane is a tree of nearly the same kind, only its leaves are more palmated, and it has less disposition to overshadow the ground. It was a great favorite with the ancients, and Pliny, in his Natural History, tells a story of its having been brought across the Ionian Sea to shade the tomb of Diomedes, in the island of that hero; that it came thence into fertile Sicily, and was among the first of the foreign trees presented to Italy. From thence it was carried to Spain and France, where, it is said, the inhabitants were made to pay for the privilege of sitting under its shade. The same writer describes some of the principal trees of this kind, and speaks of one in the walks of the Academy at Athens, whose trunk was forty-eight feet to the branches. He describes, also, a tree in Syria, near a cool fountain by the road-side, with a cavity of eightyone feet in circumference, a forest-like head, and arms like trees overshadowing broad fields. Within this apartment, made by moss-covered stones to resemble a grotto, Licinius Mucianus thought it a fact worthy of history that he dined and slept with nineteen companions.

But the greatest of all the Oriental planes is that which stands in the valley of Bouyouderch, near Constantinople, described by Olivier, Dr. Webb, and others, the trunk of which is one hundred and fifty feet in girth, with a central hollow of eighty feet in circumference. The age of this tree it is difficult to determine; but if it is a single trunk, as there is good reason to suppose, it must be the most ancient of its species in existence; and it will hardly be deemed an exaggeration to fix its age at two thousand years.

The terebinth-tree, a native of Asia, grows to a great size, and attains to an almost fabulous age. Josephus relates that he saw a tree of this species near Hebron, which had existed since the Creation; and the Old Testament Scriptures ofter refer to this tree. Thus, Jacob buried the idolatrous images which his family brought from Mesopotamia under a terebinth-tree; an angel appeared to Gideon under a terebinthtree; it was in a valley of terebinths that Saul encamped with all his army; Absalom hung on a terebinth-tree; and Isaiah threatens idolaters that they shall be as a terebinth-tree whose leaves fall off. One of these trees, under which the prophetess Deborah is said to have dwelt, was in existence in the days of St. Jerome, and was probably then a thousand years old. And towards the middle of the seventeenth century there stood between Jerusalem and Bethlehem an old tree under which tradition relates that the Virgin Mary rested as she went to present her son in the Jewish temple; This tree, however, which was equally venerated by Christians and Mussulmans, was accidentally destroyed by fire in 1616, after having stood for nearly two thousand years.

The olive is found in Europe and Asia, and, as a tree, is of slower growth than even the oak. From this circumstance, and the durableness of its wood, it furnishes instances of remarkable longevity. Thus the olive at Pescio, mentioned by De Candolle, which had a trunk twenty-four feet in girth, is supposed to have been at least seven hundred years old; and although now in a state of decrepitude, it continues to bear a crop of fruit of considerable abundance. It is not impossible, therefore, that the eight venerable trees still to be found on the Mount of Olives may have been in existence, as tradition asserts, at the time of our Saviour’s passion, and their age may extend beyond two thousand years. Certain it is that they are venerable trees, and need little aid from the imagination to invest them with a peculiar charm.

In concluding this paper, we must refer briefly to some of the largest, though not the oldest trees on our globe. These are the giant trees of California, which are among the most perfect and wonderful specimens of vegetable life. Fifteen or twenty groves of these trees have been discovered in all, on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, in Southern California; but the two principal groves are in Calaveras County, and on the borders of Mariposa and Fresno counties, but a few miles from the direct road to the valley of the Yo Semite.

These “ big trees,” as they are commonly called, are scattered in groups among the pines and cedars throughout a space of several miles, and the collection numbers about six hundred. They attain to the diameter of from thirty to fifty feet, and rarely fall below two hundred feet in height. Mr. Bowles, of the Springfield Republican, who visited this grove in company with Mr. Colfax and others, in his delightful work, Across the Continent, says: “ Among those, we examined are six, each over thirty feet in diameter, and from ninety to one hundred feet in circumference; fifty over sixteen feet in diameter, and two hundred over twelve feet. The Grizzly Giant, which is among the largest and most noteworthy, runs up ninety feet with scarcely perceptible diminution of bulk, and then sends out a branch, itself six feet in diameter.”

“But,” he adds, “they are even more impressive for their beauty than their bigness. The bark is an exquisitely light and delicate cinnamon color, fluted up and down the long, straight, slowly-tapering trunk, like Corinthian columns in architecture; the top, resting like a cap upon a high, bare mast, is a perfect cone; and the evergreen leaves wear a bright, light shade, by which the tree can be distinguished from afar in the forest. The wood is of a deep, rich red in color, and otherwise marks the similarity of the big trees to the species that grows so abundantly on the Coast Range of mountains through the Pacific States, and known generally as the redwood. Their wood is, however, of a finer grain than their smaller kindred, and both that and the bark, the latter sometimes as much as twenty inches thick, are so light and delicate that the winds and snows of the winter make frequent wrecks of the tops and upper branches. Many of the largest of these trees are, therefore, shorn of their upper works. One or two of the largest in the grove we visited are wholly blown down, and we rode on horseback through the trunk of an old one that had been burnt out. Many more of the noblest specimens are scarred by fires that have been wantonly built about their trunks, or swept through the forest by accident. The trunk of one huge tree is burnt into half a dozen little apartments, making capital provision for a game of hide-andseek by children, or for dividing up a picnic of older growths into sentimental couples. ”

A friend of the writer, who visited California with the Boston Board of Trade in 1870, and one of the most noted booksellers of the city, informs us that he rode erect on horseback through the trunk of the fallen tree referred to by Mr. Bowles, to the distance of one hundred and twenty feet; that he and seven others, standing shoulder to shoulder, walked down the outside of the tree without the least difficulty, such was the breadth of the foothold afforded them; and that ten horsemen, closely arranged in single file, did not reach round the trunk of the largest standing tree, which, by his measurement, was ninety-nine feet in circumference. The silence in this grove is almost unbroken. Not a bird chants its song; not an insect chirps. And to lie at full length on the soft carpet of fallen leaves, and gaze upward to the spiry tree-tops, and breathe the pure and exhilarating air which circles through the forest, is the height of enjoyment and voluptuous repose.

We have thus briefly noticed a few of the multitude of ancient trees to be found on our globe. And as we look over the list, we are struck with wonder at the extent and variety of these monuments of vegetable life. No country is destitute of such trees. Scattered everywhere in great profusion, they attest to the boundless magnificence of nature. And when we survey the whole field, and pause to reflect, we are impressed with the fact that no form of organized life is so venerable as this. Few animals live to the age of two hundred years. The duration of man’s life, except in the earliest periods of history, has rarely exceeded a hundred years. Yet here are trees, which, if we may trust our somewhat imperfect methods of calculation, must be at least from four to five thousand years old; and it is not impossible that there may be still standing trees which were in existence when Adam and Eve walked in Paradise.

J. S. Barry.