Tales out of school

by Frank R. Stockton

The inside of this tree is used for a dining hall by pleasure parties. A circular bench has been cut out of the wood, and a dozen persons can sit comfortably around the table. The room has a glass door, and a window. Beautiful ferns and mosses spring out of the sides of the tree, and decorate this hall.

Not far from Smyrna, in Asia Minor, there is a very old, and a very large Plane tree. It has three stems from one root. These join into one trunk at the height of about twenty feet from the ground, thus forming a gateway. The main road runs right through this gateway, and cavalcades of horsemen, and camel riders, and vehicles pass under this singular arch.

There is another Plane tree in the island of Cos, which is almost as well known as that of Smyrna. Its spreading branches cover the whole of a large square of a city, and are so heavy that the old trunk is not able to bear their weight. The inhabitants of the city, proud of their tree, and anxious to keep it, have built columns of marble under the branches to support them.

CHAPEL OAK OF ALLOUVILLE.

We have been visiting single trees of different kinds. There is a family of trees, every member of which attains a great size. The Baobabs ought to be large, for they require 800 years to attain their full growth. They then measure, usually, from 70 to 77 feet in girth. Enormous branches spread out from the central stem, each one of which is a respectable size for a tree. So these trees give a splendid shade, covering a space of ground 300 feet in circumference. They do not grow very tall. These trees are found chiefly in Africa.

The Baobabs remind us of another marvel of the vegetable kingdom—the great age of some trees. We have mentioned one 900 years old, and another 1,500. The ages of these are known because the trees have been traced back historically for that length of time. But these are babies in age by the side of the Baobabs. Botanists calculate the ages of the largest Baobabs to be over 5,000 years! We must remember this is calculation, not certainty. It is positively known, however, that some of them are several hundred years old; and there are olive trees known to have lived over a thousand years. This is a very good old age when we consider that man seldom lives to a hundred.

THE GIANT CANDLE.

The height to which some tropical plants that are not trees grow is surprising. You have, no doubt, all seen the queer fleshy-leaved cactus that is cultivated in green-houses. This plant has no woody stem, and yet one species of it grows to the height of twenty and thirty feet.