Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/103

 *[Footnote: which I have often seen, and which are probably the surviving remnants of an ancient garden or pleasure-ground of Montezuma, measure, (according to Burkart's account of his travels, Bd. i. S. 268, a work which otherwise contains much information), only 36 and 38 English feet in circumference; not in diameter, as has often been erroneously asserted. The Buddhists in Ceylon venerate the gigantic trunk of the sacred fig-tree of Anourahdepoura. The Indian fig-tree or Banyan, of which the branches take root round the parent stem, forming, as Onesicritus well described, a leafy canopy resembling a many-pillared tent, often attain a thickness of 28 (29-1/2 English) feet diameter. (Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, Bd. i. S. 260.) On the Bombax ceiba, see early notices of the time of Columbus, in Bembo's Historiæ Venetæ, 1551, fol. 83.

Among oak-trees, of those which have been accurately measured, the largest in Europe is no doubt that near the town of Saintes, in the Departement de la Charente Inférieure, on the road to Cozes. This tree, which is 60 (64 English) feet high, has a diameter of 27 feet 8-1/2 inches (29-1/2 English feet) near the ground; 21-1/2 (almost 23 English) feet five feet higher up; and where the great boughs commence 6 Parisian feet (6 feet 5 inches English.) In the dead part of the trunk a little chamber has been arranged, from 10 feet 8 inches to 12 feet 9 inches wide, and 9 feet 8 inches high (all English measure), with a semi-circular bench cut out of the fresh wood. A window gives light to the interior, so that the sides of the chamber (which is closed with a door) are clothed with ferns and]*