PATTERSON v. M'CAUSLAND.—3 BLAND. 59

* The existence of many forests over the same tracts of
country, by which they are now occupied in Europe, have 74
been known to stand as they now do for many centuries past; but
whether their continuance has been kept up by the prolonged life
of the greater proportion of the trees of which they are composed;
or altogether, like nations of human creatures, by a succession of
generations, leaving no individuals now alive of all those of which
, they were formerly composed, there seems to be no means of ascer-
taining. Most of the forests of our own country are, from all ap-
pearances, of as long standing as any others on the face of the
globe; and there are doubtless many lofty trees now growing which
had given umbrage to Powhatan, that distinguished chief of many
tribes But beyond the time of the first settlement of our own
country by Europeans, all our knowledge in relation to it can only
be derived from inference and conjecture.

On considering the slow growth of most forest trees; and on ob-
serving in all ancient forests how few appearances there are of any
changes or renewals, there is much reason to believe, that the most
durable of forest trees have an almost indefinite length of life.
Roget Anim. and Veget. Physi. pt. 4, c. 3. note, The white mul-
berry was introduced into Virginia about the year 1623, for the
purpose of rearing silk worms, 1 Virg. Stat. 126, 420, 520; 2 Burke's
His. Virg. 142; and some of the same species of mulberry trees,
which had been set out in Georgia, for a similar purpose, were, in
1802, alive at an hundred years of age. 2 Midi. Am. Sylva. 185.
The Norway spruce fir, (abies picea,) is allowed to be one of the
tallest trees of the old continent. The finest stocks of it are
straight-bodied, from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and
fifty feet in height; and from three to five feet in diameter; and
are said to be a hundred years in acquiring that size. 2 Mich. Am.
Sylva. 304. The common elm, (ulmus compestris,) is reckoned one
of the finest trees of the temperate zone of Europe. Several stocks
of it, which had been planted in France about the year 1580, sur-
vived in 1819; that is, were about two hundred and forty years of
age: and had then attained twenty-five or thirty feet of circumfer-

of Edward I, holding a Parliament under its branches in Clifton Park, be-
longing to the Duke of Portland, this park being the most ancient in the
island. It was a park before the conquest, and seized as such by the con-
queror. The tree is supposed to be fifteen hundred years old. The tallest
oak in England was the property of the same nobleman; it was called the
duke's walking-stick, higher than Westminster Abbey, and stood till of late
years. The largest oak in England is the Calthorpe Oak, Yorkshire, mea-
suring seventy-eight feet in circumference where the trunk meets the
ground. The three shire oak, at Worksop, was so called from covering parts
of Yorkshire, Nottingham, and Derby; it had the greatest expanse of any re-
corded in this island, dropping over seven hundred and seventy-seven square
yards. The most productive oak that of Gelond's, in Monmouthshire, felled
in 1810. Its bark brought £200. And its timber £670, (about $4,000).