Brighton.
Age of Trees (Vol. iv., pp. 401. 488.).
—At Neustadt, in Wirtemberg, there is a prodigious lime-tree, which gives its name to the town, which is called Neustadt an der Linden. The age of this tree is said to be 1000 years. According to a German writer, it required the support of sixty pillars in the year 1392, and attained its present size in 1541. It now rests, says the same authority, on above one hundred props, and spreads out so far that a market can be held under its shade. It is of this tree that Evelyn says it was—
"Set about with divers columns and monuments of stone (eighty-two in number, and formerly above one hundred more), which several princes and nobles have adorned, and which as so many pillars serve likewise to support the umbrageous and venerable boughs; and that even the tree had been much ampler the ruins and distances of the columns declare, which the rude soldiers have greatly impaired."
There is another colossal specimen of the same species in the churchyard of the village of Cadiz, near Dresden. The circumference of the trunk is forty feet. Singularly, though it is completely hollow through age, its inner surface is coated with a fresh and healthy bark.
UNICORN.
Emaciated Monumental Effigies (Vol. v., p. 427.).
—In reference to your correspondents' observations on skeleton monuments, I may mention that there is one inserted in the wall of the yard of St. Peter's Church, Drogheda. It is in high relief, cut in a dark stone and the skeleton figure half shrouded by grave clothes is a sufficiently appalling object. Beside it stands another figure still "in the flesh." It is many years since I saw the monument, and whether there be any inscription legible upon it, or whether it be generally known to whom it belongs, I cannot inform you.
URSULA.
There is a very good instance of an "altar tomb," bearing on it an ordinary effigy, and containing within it a skeleton figure, visible through pierced panel work, in Fyfield Church, Berks. It is the monument of Sir John Golafre, temp. Hen. V. Another fine instance I remember to have seen (I believe) in the parish church of Ewelme, Oxon.