The age of this tree is no less remarkable than its enormous size. Mr. Adanson relates, that, in a botanical excursion to the Magdalen Islands, he discovered some calabash-trees, from five to six feet diameter, on the bark of which were engraved, or cut to a considerable depth, a number of European names. Two of these names, which he was at the trouble to repair, were dated, one in the fourteenth, the other in the fifteenth century. The inscribed trees, mentioned by this ingenious Frenchman, had been seen in 1555, almost two centuries before, by Thevet, who mentions them in his relation of his Voyage to Terra Antarctia, or Australis. Adanson saw them in 1749. The virtues and uses of this tree and its fruits are various. The negroes of Senegal dry the bark and leaves in the shaded air, and then reduce them to powder, which is of a pretty good green colour. This powder they preserve in bags of linen or cotton, and call it lillo. They use it every day, putting three or four pinches of it into a mess, whatever it happens to be, as we do pepper and salt: but their view is, not to give a relish to their food, but to preserve a perpetual and plentiful perspiration, and to attemper the too great heat of the blood; purposes to which it certainly answers, as several Europeans have proved by repeated experiments; preserving themselves from the epidemic fever, which, in that country, is as fatal to them as the plague, and generally rages during the months of September and October: when the rains have suddenly ceased, the sun exhales the water left by them on the ground, and fills the air with a noxious vapour. M. Adanson, in the critical season, made a light ptisan of the leaves of the baobal; which he had gathered in the August of the preceding year, and had dried in the shade; and drank constantly about a pint of it every morning, either before or after breakfast, and the same quantity of it every evening, after the heat of the sun began to abate: he also took the same quantity in the middle of the day, but this was only when he felt some symptoms of an approaching fever. By this precaution he preserved himself, during the five years he resided at Senegal, from the diarrhæa and fever, which are so fatal there, and which are, however, the only diseases of the place; while other officers suffered very severely, only one of them excepted, upon whom M. Adanson prevailed to use this remedy, which for its simplicity was despised by the rest. This ptisan alone prevents that heat of urine which is common in these parts, from the month of July to November, provided the person abstains from wine. The fruit is not less useful than the leaves and the bark. The pulp that envelopes the seeds has an agreeable acid taste, and is eaten for pleasure: it is also dried and powdered, and used medicinally in pestilential fevers, the dysentery, and bloody flux: the dose is a drachm, passed through a fine sieve, taken either in common water, or in an infusion of the plantain. This powder is brought into Europe under the name of terra sigillata Lemnia. The woody bark of the fruit, and the fruit itself, when spoiled, help to supply the negroes with an excellent soap, which they make by drawing a lie from the ashes, and boiling it with palm-oil that begins to be rancid. The trunks of such of these trees as are decayed, the negroes hollow out into burying places for their poets, musicians, and buffoons. Persons of these characters they esteem greatly while they live, supposing them to derive their superior talents from sorcery, or a commerce with demons; but they regard their bodies with horror when dead, and will not give them burial in the usual manner, neither suffering them to be put into the ground, nor thrown into the sea or any river, because they imagine that the water would not then nourish the fish, nor the earth produce its fruits. The bodies shut up in these trunks become dry without rotting, and form a kind of mummies without the help of embalming. The baobal is very distinct from the calabash-tree of America, with which it has been confounded by Father Labat.
The following is an account of a Remarkable Oak Tree:—
Behold the oak does young and verdant stand
Above the grove, all others to command;
His wide-extended limbs the forest crown’d,
Shading the trees, as well as they the ground:
Young murm’ring tempests in his boughs are bred,
And gathering clouds from round his lofty head;
Outrageous thunder, stormy winds, and rain,
Discharge their fury on his head in vain;
Earthquakes below, and lightnings from above,
Rend not his trunk, nor his fix’d root remove.
Blackmore.
Mr. Gilpin, in his forest scenery, gives the following account of an aged oak:—
“Close by the gate of the Water-walk, at Magdalen College in Oxford, grew an oak, which perhaps stood there a saplin when Alfred the Great founded the university. This period only includes a space of nine hundred years, which is no great age for an oak. It is a difficult matter indeed to ascertain the age of a tree. The age of a castle or abbey is the object of history: even a common house is recorded by the family that built it. All these objects arrive at maturity in their youth, if I may so speak. But the tree gradually completing its growth, is not worth recording in the early part of its existence: it is then only a common tree; and afterwards, when it becomes remarkable for its age, all memory of its youth is lost. This tree, however, can almost produce historical evidence for the age assigned to it.”
About five hundred years after the time of Alfred, William of Wainfleet, Dr. Stukely tells us, expressly ordered this college to be founded near the great oak; (Itiner. Curios.) and an oak could not, I think, be less than five hundred years of age, to merit that title, together with the honour of fixing the site of a college. When the magnificence of Cardinal Wolsey erected that handsome tower which is so ornamental to the whole building, this tree might probably be in the meridian of its glory; or rather, perhaps it had attained a green old age. But it must have been manifestly in its decline, at that memorable æra, when the tyranny of James gave the fellows of Magdalen so noble an opportunity of withstanding bigotry and superstition. It was afterwards much injured in the time of Charles II, when the present walks were laid out: its roots were disturbed; and from that period it declined fast, and became reduced by degrees to little more than a mere trunk. The oldest members of the university can scarcely recollect it in better plight: but the faithful records of history[20] have handed down its ancient dimensions.
It once flung its boughs through a space of sixteen yards on every side from its trunk; and under its magnificent pavilion could have sheltered with ease three thousand men: though in its decayed state, it could, for many years, do little more than shelter some luckless individual, whom the driving shower had overtaken in his evening walk. In the summer of the year 1788, this magnificent ruin fell to the ground, alarming the college with its crashing sound. It then appeared how precariously it had stood for many years. Its grand taproot was decayed; and it had hold of the earth only by two or three roots, of which none was more than a couple of inches in diameter. From a part of its ruins, a chair has been made for the president of the college, which will long continue its memory.
This will be a proper place for introducing the history of Some of the largest Trees now growing in England.—In Hainault Forest, near Barking in Essex, there is an oak which has attained the enormous bulk of thirty-six feet in circumference. This extraordinary tree has been known for ages by the name of Fairlop. The tradition of the country traces it half way up the Christian æra. Beneath its shade, which overspreads an area of three hundred feet in circuit, an annual fair has long been held on the first Friday in July, and no booth is suffered to be erected beyond the extent of its boughs.
At Cromwell Park, near Letbury in Gloucestershire, the seat of Lord Dacre, is a huge chesnut tree, probably as remarkable for antiquity as size; having been mentioned (according to Sir Richard Atkins) in king John’s days, six centuries ago, as the wonder of the neighbourhood, and measuring at present, at the foot, fifty-seven feet in circumference. It is supposed to be at least eight hundred years old.
In Darley church-yard, near Matlock in Derbyshire, is a yew tree, thirty-three feet in girt.