There are few subjects upon which more nonsense has been talked and written than there has been about the age of trees. Some years ago I saw a letter written to the _Times_ (I think) about a catalpa tree in Gray’s Inn Garden, which was said to have been planted by Sir Walter Raleigh (the catalpa, by the by, was first introduced into England in the year 1726!), and in that letter the writer alluded to the sequoias or Wellingtonias, which he said must have been already mature trees “when Abraham was a little boy!” I felt how pleased that gentleman was with himself when he concocted that phrase. Sir Joseph Hooker, Mr. Carruthers and I once took the trouble to count accurately the rings on the section of the sequoia in the Natural History Museum. They numbered one thousand three hundred and thirty-five. “This particular tree was sixty-two feet in girth at eight feet from the ground; three hundred feet high, and without branches for two hundred feet of its height.” (Veitch’s “Manual of Conifers.”) “From these and other authentic data,” says Veitch’s book, “it is not unsafe to infer that none of the existing Wellingtonias antedate the Christian Era, or that with very few exceptions, the oldest of them reach within five hundred years of that epoch, whose ages, therefore, do not much exceed that of the oldest yews in Great Britain.” The yew is, as is well known, the oldest tree that we have; but here again there is great exaggeration. I was once shown a yew tree in Hayling Island which I was solemnly assured was standing there at the time of Julius Cæsar’s landing. That a yew tree stood there is very possible; but that particular yew tree, no! I have seen a young tree growing out of an old one that was a mere hollow shell, the seed having germinated within it. Many a legend in regard to yews may have started in that way; the old host gradually rotting away to make room for the guest. Seedlings may rise close to the recorded tree and in the course of centuries be taken by ignorant or careless observers for it. As regards the age of oaks, the old homely tradition is probably founded on something like fact. Three hundred years of growth, three hundred standing still—which is, of course, nonsense, for in this world nothing stands still—and three hundred years in which to decay. Dryden put it into verse. “The monarch oak, the patriarch of trees Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees: Three centuries he grows, and three he stays Supreme in state: and in three more decays. “PALAEMON AND ARCITE.”