Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1884 — REMARKABLE TREES. [ARTICLE]

REMARKABLE TREES.

Some ol tho Notable Monarch* of the Forest Still Existing. ‘ One-third of the land surface of our planet, says the Boston Transcript, is covered with trees. The largest treo in the world is situated in Mascoli, near the foot of Mount Etna, and is called “The Chestnut Tree of a Hundred Horses,” and is believed to be the oldest free in the world. Its name arose from the report that Queen Jane of Aragon, with her principal nobility, took refuge from a violent storm under its branches. At one time it was supposed that it consisted of a plump of trees united, but on digging away the earth, the root was found entire and at no very great depth. Five enormous branches rise from one trunk, which is 212 feet in circumference. A part of the trunk has been broken away, and its interior is hollow, and large enough to contain avfloek'of sheep, or to admit two carriages driving abreast through it. It still bears abundance of fruit, and its collectors have built a hut within the trunk, the better to promote their proceedings. At Tortworth, England, there exists a chestnut tree measuring, at four feet from the ground, sixty feet in circumference, although at the present time it is nearly a sylvan ruin. A fig tree stands on the northerly bank of the River Johnstone, in East Australia, in latitude 27 degrees, longitude 151 degrees, near Brisbane, measuring three feet from the ground, 150 feet, and at fifty-five feet, where it sends off great branches, eighty feet in circumference. There lies upon Mount Bawbaw, Gippsland, Southeast Australia. a gum tree measuring 480 feet as it lies where it was broken off at the top, and it is calculated to have stood 520 high; it measures six feet in circumference. In Bougouderch, near Constantinople, is. a plane tree measuring 119 feet in circumference. At Bajak, Bournarbashi,, Asia Minor, is a pond overshadowed by three gigantic plane trees, the trunk of one of which, one foot from the ground, measures fortythree feet in circumference. Tho largest tree in the United States stands near Bear Creek, on the north side of Tule River, California. It measures 140 feet in circumference. In Tuolume grove, Nevada, stands “The Dead Giant Redwood Tree,” measuring 119 feet in circumference, which has been so entirely hollowed out by long use as a chimney that the roadmakers could not resist the temptation of completing the work of camp-fires, so they have cut a great archway right through the farther side of the poor dead stump, and led the road through it, so that now the high, crowded coach daily passes through the very heart of the great tree, which may have been young in the days of Juiins Cresar. There are thirteen other trees standing near it measuring from seventy-two to ninety-six feet in circumference. The “Grizzly Giant,” the monarch of the Moriposa grove, measuring ninety-two feet in circumference. The TularoFresno forest, so called from being situated in those two counties (California,) extending seventy miles in length, with a width in some places of ten miles, consists mainly of big trees, with a multitude of stnaller ones, measuring from six to 120 feet. Near Santes, in France, stands an oak treo measuring ninety-one feet in circumference. At. Holwood, near Bromley, England, stands an oak tree with a root projecting on one side into the shape of a settee. Seated upon that root, William Pitt and William Wilberforce held together a conversation, as a result of which the latter, in 1782, brought the question of the abolition of the slave trade before the House of Commons. The tree is still known as the Wilberforce oak. Pliny (A. D. 23) tells ns of a plane tree growing in his time, which was in itself a forest. The Governor of Lucia gave an entertainment to his friends in the hollow trunk, which is eighty feet in circumference. John Dowd discovered in Calaveras County, California, a grove of 103 trees covering a space of fifty acres, measuring seventy to ninety-six feet in circumference. Throuhout all England there are oak trees of remarkable size. The “CowtbOrp Oak,” on the banks of the Nidd in Yorkshire, measures at the ground seventy-eighty fee t in circumference. The famous tree called the “Charter Oak,” near Hartford, Connecticut which fell August 21,1856, was thirty-three feet in circumference at the ground, and it fell so as to leave eight feet of stump on one side and six feet on the other. A double trunked oak tree is standing in a garden in South Beaver, Pennsylvania which begins at the root with a single trunk. This divides into ’two, about one foot from the ground and continues thus for ten feet, and then becomes united again. Each of the twin trunks, at the point of division, measures three feet in circumference.