De Sacrobosco discrevit tempora Ramus
Gratia cui nomen dederat divina Johannis,
meaning that in 1244 a bough from the holy wood discrevit tempora. This Pits calls an obscure reference to the time of his death, in the same sentence in which he places that time in 1256. Very obscure indeed, if a reference to his death in 1256 be intended. But if discrevit tempora refer, not to death, but to the matter of his celebrated work de anni ratione, seu ... computus Ecclesiasticus, there is no obscurity at all. And at the end of a Merton manuscript of this computus, Tanner found the preceding lines inserted; the copyist taking them to allude, of course, to the date of the book.
M.
Age of Trees (Vol. iv., p. 401.).
—Your correspondent L. inquires after authentic evidence respecting the age of ancient trees:
"In the 12th vol. of Loudon's Gardener's Magazine, p. 588., the Cowthorpe Oak [standing at the extremity of the village of Cowthorpe, near Wetherby in Yorkshire], is said to be 'undoubtedly the largest tree at present known in the kingdom.'
"Professor Burnet says, 'the Cowthorpe Oak is sixteen hundred years old. We may ask, how is this ascertained? From tradition, or calculated on botanical data? If the latter, it is possibly far removed from truth. The method of calculating the age of dicotyledonous trees, with hollow trunks' [and he elsewhere says, so large is the hollow of the Cowthorpe Oak, that it is reported to have had upwards of seventy persons at one time therein assembled], 'is by multiplying the number of rings comprised in a given portion of the remaining wood, by the proportion which half the entire diameter of the trunk bears to the selected portion.... It is evident, however, that this calculation proceeds on the assumption of two circumstances, whose probable variations may seriously affect the result.
"'1st. That all the rings are of equal width.
"'2nd. That each ring is of uniform width on both sides of the tree.