THE AGE OF TREES.--THE GREAT ELM AT HAMPSTEAD.
The question of the age of trees, introduced to your notice by your very able correspondent L. (Vol. iv., p. 401.), and touched upon by several others, is a subject of peculiar interest, and yet I scarcely know any ancient memorials which have been so much neglected by antiquarian inquirers. How seldom has any systematic attempt been made to collect the existing historical evidence relating to them, and of the few weak efforts which have been put forth in that direction, how insignificant have been the results! Such evidence exists in a great variety of quarters, and if your correspondents could be persuaded to adopt L.'s suggestion, and take up the matter in a really serious spirit, the nature of your publication, and the wide extent of your circulation, render your pages singularly well adapted for doing really effective service in a cause which is equally interesting to the naturalist and the antiquary. What is wanted is, that antiquarian students should bring forward the facts respecting historical trees which are to be found in ancient evidences of all kinds, and that local knowledge should be applied to the identification of such trees wherever it is possible. If this were done--done, that is, thoroughly and carefully--I cannot doubt that an antiquity would be satisfactorily established in reference to many trees and clumps of trees still existing throughout the kingdom, which it would now be thought supremely wild and fanciful even to imagine. I would not go the length of anticipating that we might establish the identity of some grove in which druidical mysteries have been celebrated, or (to adopt the words of Sir Walter Scott) of some "broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched" monarchs of the forest, "which had witnessed the march of the Roman soldiery;" I should almost despair even of identifying the thorns on Ash Down (a place itself named from some celebrated tree), around which the battle raged between Alfred and the Danes: but every one at all acquainted with ancient documents knows how frequently they contain allusions to celebrated trees; and it is perfectly possible that trees which sheltered King John in his continual wild, impulsive, Arab-like flights from place to place, or under which the Edwards halted in their marches to Scotland or Wales, may yet be pointed out. I have no doubt that Evelyn saw evidence that the Tortworth Great Chestnut was a boundary tree in the days of King Stephen; and if such evidence is not now forthcoming, I by no means despair of its re-discovery, if any one will set himself seriously to search for it. We learn in Pepys[3], that in his time, in the forest of Dean, there were still standing the old "Vorbid" or "forbid" trees of the time of Edward III.; that is (I presume), the trees which were left standing as marks or boundaries when there was a great felling of timber in the reign of Edward III. Perhaps some of your correspondents can tell us whether there are any such trees known in the forest of Dean now.