less graceful than the American elm, and more sturdy and spreading in its form; but it has the advantage of retaining its foliage for several weeks longer than our native tree. Fine specimens are found in this country, in Boston and its vicinity.

The linden is a native of America and Europe, and in both countries attains to a great size and age. The celebrated sycamore maple which stands near the entrance of the village of Trons, in the Grisons, the cradle of liberty among the Rhotian Alps, -was once called a linden, and under its spreading branches the Gray League was solemnized in 1424. Its age is estimated at six hundred years. The true linden is a favorite with the Swiss, and is intimately associated with important events in the history of that people. The linden at Freiburg, planted in 1476 to commemorate the battle of Morat, is still standing, and though beginning to decay, has already proved a more durable monument than the famous ossuary on that battle-field, "Where Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host, A bony heap, through ages to remain Themselves their monument."

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Another tree, standing at the village of Villars-en-Moing, near Morat, was noted tree four centuries ago, and at four feet from the ground it has a circumference of thirty-eight feet. Its full age is computed at nine hundred years. The still more celebrated linden of Neustadt on the Kocher, in Würtemberg, is equally old, and was a remarkable tree at the opening of the thirteenth century; for the village of Helmbundt, which was destroyed in 1226, was subsequently rebuilt in the vicinity of this tree, and thence took the name of Neustadt an der grossen Linden. From an old poem, written in 1404, it appears that even then the tree was of such size, and the spread of its branches was so enormous, that their weight was sustained by sixty-seven columns of stone. At six feet from the ground the circumference of the tree is thirty-six English feet, and its age is computed at nine hundred years.

The chestnut tree, found in Europe and America, also lives to a good old age. In this country, large specimens

are occasionally found, and many are mentioned by Mr. Emerson, in his Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts, from fourteen to twenty-six feet in circumference, the largest of which must be from four to six hundred years old. But great as these are, they are thrown into the shade, and seem like pigmies, beside the enor mous tree on Mount Etna, called the Castagna di cento cavalli, from the tradition of its having once sheltered in its hollow trunk one hundred mounted cavaliers under Jeanne of Aragon. Brydone, in his Tour in Sicily, described this tree in 1770, and says it was then two hundred and four feet in circumference, and had the appearance of five distinct trunks. Kircher, however, who saw the tree a century earlier, speaks of the five as united in one. An engraving of this tree, with its splendid top, is given in Plate LXXXVII. of Low's American Encyclopedia, published in 1807.

Besides this, there are other colossal chestnuts on Mount Etna with undoubted single trunks; and three of these, when measured a quarter of a century ago, had respectively a circumference of fiftyseven, sixty-four, and seventy feet. Their age is probably not far from fifteen hundred years; and the great tree is supposed to be from two thousand to twenty-five hundred years old. The Great Chestnut of Sancerre, France, described by Bosc, has been called by that name for at least six hundred years; and as its girth is thirty-three feet at six feet from the ground, its full age is probably at least a thousand years. The same is true of the Great Chestnut of Totworth, in Gloucestershire, England, which is known to have been standing in 1150, and which is fifty-two feet in circumference at the ground. This tree fixes the boundary of the ancient manor, and its age is probably about twelve hundred years.

The black walnut is a native of America, and in the States bordering on the Ohio often grows to a great size. Michaux says he has frequently seen walnuts from six to seven feet in diameter; and we have measured stumps in Illinois which were from five to eight feet

in diameter. Planks have been sawed from such trees five feet wide and thirty or forty feet long. When the walnut stands alone, it spreads out into a spacious head and extends its branches horizontally to a great distance; but in the depths of the forest it is of a more compact growth, and is often shorn of its limbs, and has a smooth bole to the height of from forty to sixty feet. The largest trees are probably from four to six hundred years old.

The walnut of Europe is equally venerable; and Galignani's Messenger mentions one on the road from Martel to Grammont which is at least three hundred and fifty years old. Its height is fifty-five feet, and its diameter fourteen feet. Its branches, seven in number, extend to a distance of one hundred and twenty-five feet, and it bears on an average fifteen bags of nuts per annum.

The button-wood, or sycamore, the American plane, is often a venerable object to behold; and specimens may be found from six to seven feet in diameter, yet sound, notwithstanding the disease which attacked them so generally a third of a century ago, and which threatened for a time to sweep them entirely away. One formerly stood in the town of Wakefield, on land of John Tyler, which measured thirty feet in circumference at the ground. It was hollow within, and the opening was sufficient to permit four men to stand in it easily. Some mischievous boys built a fire in it one Sunday, and the tree burned all day; but the flames were extinguished, and subsequently the tree was felled; a portion of the trunk was removed to the Common, and a platform erected upon it, from which Hon. Henry Wilson, now Vice-President of the United States, and then just beginning his political career, delivered a stump speech in the Harrison campaign of 1841.

At a place called Vaucluse, near Newport, Rhode Island, a button-wood is described which, in 1839, measured twenty-four feet in circumference at the ground; and three miles from Hagerstown, Maryland, near Salem Church, a tree is standing which is thirty-nine feet

in circumference at the ground, and the cavity within is eleven feet in diameter. A Mr. Gelwicks, with twenty scholars, from eight to seventeen years old, stood in a circle around this cavity. As the growth of the button-wood after a certain period is quite slow, it is probable that this tree is five or six hundred years old, and the others we have described were from two to four hundred years old.

The elder Michaux measured a tree on a small island in the Ohio, which was over forty feet in circumference at five feet from the ground. General Washington had measured the same tree twenty years before, and found it to be of nearly the same size. The younger Michaux found a tree in 1802 on the right bank of the Ohio, thirtysix miles from Marietta, which measured forty-seven feet in circumference at four feet from the ground. Either of these trees must have been at least six hundred years old.

The Oriental plane is a tree of nearly the same kind, only its leaves are more palmated, and it has less disposition to overshadow the ground. It was a great favorite with the ancients, and Pliny, in his Natural History, tells a story of its having been brought across the Ionian Sea to shade the tomb of Diomedes, in the island of that hero; that it came thence into fertile Sicily, and was among the first of the foreign trees presented to Italy. From thence it was carried to Spain and France, where, it is said, the inhabitants were made to pay for the privilege of sitting under its shade. The same writer describes some of the principal trees of this kind, and speaks of one in the walks of the Academy at Athens, whose trunk was forty-eight feet to the branches. He describes, also, a tree in Syria, near a cool fountain by the road-side, with a cavity of eightyone feet in circumference, a forest-like head, and arms like trees overshadowing broad fields. Within this apartment, made by moss-covered stones to resemble a grotto, Licinius Mucianus thought it a fact worthy of history that he dined and slept with nineteen companions.

But the greatest of all the Oriental planes is that which stands in the valley of Bouyouderch, near Constantinople, described by Olivier, Dr. Webb, and others, the trunk of which is one hundred and fifty feet in girth, with a central hollow of eighty feet in circumference. The age of this tree it is difficult to determine; but if it is a single trunk, as there is good reason to suppose, it must be the most ancient of its species in existence; and it will hardly be deemed an exaggeration to fix its age at two thousand years.

The terebinth-tree, a native of Asia, grows to a great size, and attains to an almost fabulous age. Josephus relates that he saw a tree of this species near Hebron, which had existed since the Creation; and the Old Testament Scriptures ofter refer to this tree. Thus, Jacob buried the idolatrous images which his family brought from Mesopotamia under a terebinth-tree; an angel appeared to Gideon under a terebinthtree; it was in a valley of terebinths that Saul encamped with all his army; Absalom hung on a terebinth-tree; and Isaiah threatens idolaters that they shall be as a terebinth-tree whose leaves fall off.

One of these trees, under which the prophetess Deborah is said to have dwelt, was in existence in the days of St. Jerome, and was probably then a thousand years old. And towards the middle of the seventeenth century there stood between Jerusalem and Bethlehem an old tree under which tradition relates that the Virgin Mary rested as she went to present her son in the Jewish temple; This tree, however, which was equally venerated by Christians and Mussulmans, was accidentally destroyed by fire in 1616, after having stood for nearly two thousand years.

The olive is found in Europe and Asia, and, as a tree, is of slower growth than even the oak. From this circumstance, and the durableness of its wood, it furnishes instances of remarkable longevity. Thus the olive at Pescio, mentioned by De Candolle, which had a trunk twenty-four feet in girth, is supposed to have been at least seven

hundred years old; and although now in a state of decrepitude, it continues to bear a crop of fruit of considerable abundance. It is not impossible, therefore, that the eight venerable trees still to be found on the Mount of Olives may have been in existence, as tradition asserts, at the time of our Saviour's passion, and their age may extend beyond two thousand years. Certain it is that they are venerable trees, and need little aid from the imagination to invest them with a peculiar charm.

In concluding this paper, we must refer briefly to some of the largest, though not the oldest trees on our globe. These are the giant trees of California, which are among the most perfect and wonderful specimens of vegetable life. Fifteen or twenty groves of these trees have been discovered in all, on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, in Southern California; but the two principal groves are in Calaveras County, and on the borders of Mariposa and Fresno counties, but a few miles from the direct road to the valley of the Yo Semite.

These "big trees," as they are commonly called, are scattered in groups among the pines and cedars throughout a space of several miles, and the collection numbers about six hundred. They attain to the diameter of from thirty to fifty feet, and rarely fall below two hundred feet in height. Mr. Bowles, of the Springfield Republican, who visited this grove in company with Mr. Colfax and others, in his delightful work, Across the Continent, says: "Among those we examined are six, each over thirty feet in diameter, and from ninety to one hundred feet in circumference; fifty over sixteen feet in diameter, and two hundred over twelve feet. The Grizzly Giant, which is among the largest and most noteworthy, runs up ninety feet with scarcely perceptible diminution of bulk, and then sends out a branch, itself six feet in diameter."

"But," he adds, "they are even more impressive for their beauty than their bigness. The bark is an exquisitely light and delicate cinnamon color,

fluted up and down the long, straight, slowly-tapering trunk, like Corinthian columns in architecture; the top, resting like a cap upon a high, bare mast, is a perfect cone; and the evergreen leaves wear a bright, light shade, by which the tree can be distinguished from afar in the forest. The wood is of a deep, rich red in color, and otherwise marks the similarity of the big trees to the species that grows so abundantly on the Coast Range of mountains through the Pacific States, and known generally as the redwood. Their wood is, however, of a finer grain than their smaller kindred, and both that and the bark, the latter sometimes as much as twenty inches thick, are so light and delicate that the winds and snows of the winter make frequent wrecks of the tops and upper branches. Many of the largest of these trees are, therefore, shorn of their upper works.

One or two of the largest in the grove we visited are wholly blown down, and we rode on horseback through the trunk of an old one that had been burnt out. Many more of the noblest specimens are scarred by fires that have been wantonly built about their trunks, or swept through the forest by accident. The trunk of one huge tree is burnt into half a dozen little apartments, making capital provision for a game of hide-andseek by children, or for dividing up a picnic of older growths into sentimental couples."

A friend of the writer, who visited California with the Boston Board of Trade in 1870, and one of the most noted booksellers of the city, informs us that he rode erect on horseback through the trunk of the fallen tree referred to by Mr. Bowles, to the distance of one hun

dred and twenty feet; that he and seven others, standing shoulder to shoulder, walked down the outside of the tree without the least difficulty, such was the breadth of the foothold afforded them; and that ten horsemen, closely arranged in single file, did not reach round the trunk of the largest standing tree, which, by his measurement, was ninety-nine feet in circumference. The silence in this grove is almost unbroken. Not a bird chants its song; not an insect chirps. And to lie at full length on the soft carpet of fallen leaves, and gaze upward to the spiry tree-tops, and breathe the pure and exhilarating air which circles through the forest, is the height of enjoyment and voluptuous repose.

We have thus briefly noticed a few of the multitude of ancient trees to be found on our globe. And as we look over the list, we are struck with wonder at the extent and variety of these monuments of vegetable life. No country is destitute of such trees. Scattered everywhere in great profusion, they attest to the boundless magnificence of nature. And when we survey the whole field, and pause to reflect, we are impressed with the fact that no form of organized life is so venerable as this. Few animals live to the age of two hundred years. The duration of man's life, except in the earliest periods of history, has rarely exceeded a hundred years. Yet here are trees, which, if we may trust our somewhat imperfect methods of calculation, must be at least from four to five thousand years old; and it is not impossible that there may be still standing trees which were in existence when Adam and Eve walked in Paradise.

J. S. Barry.

Ir has become painfully evident, during the past few years, that no branch of investigation has received so little attention, in this country, as the problems which are grouped under the general title of "political economy." In Europe, men of the highest type of genius have spent their lives in investigating and made themselves eminent by their works upon these subjects; but as yet no great advance has been made with us, and the simplest principles are as yet unrecognized by the mass of the people. It may be from this cause that although our great boast has been the ease with which material welfare can be secured, although we are proud of the common wealth of our people the special wealth of individuals, which, when aggregated, makes up the gross sum of which we are so proud, is in itself a cause of jealousy, and at the present time, in some cases, almost a mark for legal confiscation.

The discussion of the land grant policy, of the general railroad question, and of what is called the labor question, has revealed an under-current of resentment, not only on account of alleged frauds and abuses, but also because men should have undertaken to become rich out of what are called public services, like the construction of railroads. Coupled with this is a jealousy of wealth or possession itself, which finds expression not only in public discussion, but also, in a far more mischievous and wide-spread way, in the poor work of large classes of mechanics and employés; the proportion of journeymen who take a pride in doing good work being lamentably small, the general sentiment appearing to be that society owes the laborer a good subsistence irrespective of the return which he may make.

This state of feeling does not imply an absolute wrong intent on the part of those of whom it is true. The vast ma

jority of men will deal fairly with each other if left to the innate sense of trust and honor which is in them: but the attempt of legislators to alter the conditions of distribution, by perverting the laws for imposing public taxes into instruments for enlarging private profits under the pretense of keeping up wages; the enforced use of bad money; the unavoidable effect of the war in making a few men very rich, and other like causes, have created a feeling of unfair treatment, and while there may be few who can reason the matter out, there are great numbers who have an instinctive sense of being unjustly served. They perceive that there have been vast improvements and inventions from which they as yet get little benefit, and, impatient at the slow remedy, they become somewhat hopeless and undertake to get a remedy by the same wrong method of meddlesome legislation that has caused many of the ills under which they suffer.

A very large part of these wrong ideas about wealth and the jealousy of property may doubtless be attributed to the continued use of bad money, whereby the government of the nation now lends itself to every fraud committed by individuals, in being itself the exponent of a lie and of useless and fradulent insolvency.

But in addition to this potent cause of the evil indicated in this paper, there are others more subtle and remote. During the exceptional period of war legislation and of the absolute loss and unequal distribution of wealth that has always ensued from war, there has been a good deal more than the usual amount of nonsense talked at and to the laborer about the dignity of labor; as if a man was peculiarly meritorious because he is poor, and so obliged to work with his hands. Of course nothing is to be said against a man who is obliged to be a digger and a delver, or to saw wood or