The living statue.

Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The living statue. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    We extract the following passage, descriptive of this tree, from the article “ iEtna,’’ in the Penny Cyclo- patdia:— “ It appears to consist of five large and two smaller trees, which, from the circumstance of the barks and boughs being all outside, are considered to have been one trunk originally. The largest trunk is thirty-eight feet in circumference, and the circuit of the whole five, measured just above the ground, is one hundred and sixty-three feet; it still bears rich foliage, and much small fruit, though the heart of the trunk is decayed, and a public road leads through it wide enough for two coaches to drive abreast. In the middle cavity a hut is built for the accommodation of those who collect and preserve the chesnuts. “ This is said, by the natives, to be ‘the‘oldest of trees.' From the state of decay, it is impossible to have recourse to the usual mode of estimating the age of trees by counting the concentric rings of annual growth, and therefore no exact numerical expression can be as- signed to the antiquity of this individual. That it may be some thousand years old is by no means improbable. Adanson examined in this manner a Baobab tree (Adan- sonia digitata) in Senegal, and inferred that it had attained the age of five thousand one hundred and fifty years ; and De Candolle considers it not improbable that the celebrated Taxodium of Chapultopec, in Mexico (Cvpressus disticha, Linn.), which is one hundred and seventeen feet in circumference, may be still more aged.’ [Great Chesnut Tree of Mount yL.tna.] It is evident that if the great chesnut tree were in reality a collection of trees, as it appears to be, the wonder of its size would at once be at an end. Brydone, who visited it in 1770, says— “ I own I was by no means struck with its appearance, as it does not seem to be one tree, but a bush of five large trees growing together. We complained to our guides of the imposition; when they unanimously as- sured us, that by the universal tradition, and even testi- mony of the country, all these were once united in one stem ; that their grandfathers remembered this, when it was looked upon as the glory of the forest, and visited from all quarters ; that for many years past it had been reduced to the venerable ruin we beheld. We began to examine it with more attention, and found that there was indeed an appearance as if these five trees had really been once united in one. The opening in the middle is at present prodigious; and it does indeed require faith to believe, that so vast a space was once occupied by solid timber. But there is no appearance of bark on the inside of any of the stumps, nor on the sides that are opposite to one another. I have since been told by the Canonico Recupero, an ingenious ecclesiastic of this place, that he was at the expense of carrying up peasants with tools to dig round the Castagno de' cento cavalli, and he assures me, upon his honour, that he found all these stems united below ground in one root. Houel, m his ‘Voyage Pittoresque des Isles de Sicile, tome ii. p. 79, 1784, has given a plate of this tree, from which the above cut is copied. He appears to have taken great pains to ascertain the fact of there being only one trunk, and to have completely satisfied himself that the apparent divisions have been produced, partly by the decay of time, and partly by the peasants continually cutting out portions of the wood and bark for fuel. • « The Office of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is al 59, Lincoln's Inn Fields. LONDONCHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST. Printed by William Clowes. Stamford Street.