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PATTERSON v. M'CAUSLAND. 73
far as they have gone, afford perhaps the only, or certainly the least
questionable evidence as to the growth and age of forest trees. In
such cases it has been observed, that oaks and beech are not fit for
use, as timber, until they attain about fifty or sixty years of age;
but that the Scotch fir, (pinus sylmstris,) larch, (larix,) ash, and
chesnut, become fit for use after a growth of twenty or thirty years,
The larch, in particular, than which there is no tree in England of
quicker growth, is said, on an average in favourable situations, to
increase until fifty years of age, at the rate of half an inch in diame-
ter and two feet and a half in height each year. Instances are
mentioned where in Scotland, young oaks, valuable for their bark
alone, are usually cut at from twelve to twenty-five years old. (i)
I do not understand, however, that any of these historical ac-
counts of the plantations of forest trees have, as yet, covered as
much as the lapse of an hundred years. They make no mention
of the expectation of life that may be attributed to any such trees;
nor do they speak of the average term of the existence of any of
them. It has been said that in England the oak attains an age, in
some instances, of more than a thousand years; but that the beech,
the ash, and the sycamore, (acer pseudo platanus,) most likely
never live half so long. But all plants, as well as all animals, are
alike subject to the inexorable law of mortality, as is sufficiently
shewn by the bountiful provision made by nature for their reproduc-
tion. Hence, and from the well known fact, that all plants are
subject to diseases, it necessarily follows, that all trees, like ani-
mals, have an average and ultimate term of existence beyond which
their lives are rarely extended, or cannot be prolonged, (j)
(t) Rees' Cyclo, v. Plantation.-—(j) Rees' Cyclo.v. Timber; Thompson's Chem.
b, 4, e. 2, s. 18, anil e. 3, s. 6; Roget's Animal and Vegetable Physiology, part 4.
LOUDON, in Ms arboretum Britannicum, states that the oldest oak in England is
supposed to be the parliament oak, so called from the tradition of Edward I, hold-
ing a parliament under its branches in Clifton Park, belonging to the Duke of Port-
land, this park being the most ancient in the island. It was a park before the
conquest, and seized as such by the conqueror. The tree is supposed to be fifteen
hundred years old. The tallest oak in England was the property of the same noble-
man; 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,
measuring 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 recorded 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)
10 v.3
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