In answer to the request of the university authorities Mr. Schutz has taken accurate measurements of the tree, which are as follows: Circumference one foot from the ground, twenty-two feet, eight inches—below this the roots appear above the surface of the ground, making the tree about twenty-six feet; circumference nine feet from the ground, nineteen feet nine inches; height, 102 feet; width of shadow at noon, 120 feet. The big tree is forty-six years old, having been planted in 1868 by D. Arnold, a Colusa County pioneer. Virginia’s Oldest Cow Dies. “Old Nancy,” said to be the oldest cow in Virginia, is dead. This cow was fifty-two years old when she expired with the old year, thus turning the recent holiday into a day of gloom for her owner and others. When young, the cow’s color had been a blood-red, but for more than twenty years her hair had been turning white, until at the time of her death her hair was as white as the snow that covered the ground. Her owner, John Adkins, of Big Laurel, Va., was only one day older than Nancy, and at his marriage the cow—then being over twenty—was a wedding gift from his father, who said: “Keep Nancy until she dies, John, for she’s a good old cow.” In recent years her owner has been offered good round sums for the aged animal, but he invariably refused, with the remark: “No, no; I’d just as soon think of parting with Martha—his wife—as to allow old Nancy to be toted around the country with a show.” Emigrant from Erin Dies a Millionaire. The story of the hunt for gold is ever a story of toil and privation, often a tragedy. For the one who strikes it rich, thousands are lost in the oblivion of poverty and ill fate. Colonel Thomas Cruse, who died at the age of seventy-nine, in Helena, Mont., recently, was one of the lucky few who leaped from poverty to affluence thirty years ago. He discovered the Drum Lummon Gold Mine, north of Helena, sold it to an English syndicate for $1,500,000, retaining one-sixth interest, and shared in the profits of $30,000,000 which the mine has produced. Mr. Cruse was twenty years old when he left County Cavan, Ireland, to seek his fortune in the mining camps of the West. He roamed around various diggings in California, Nevada, and Idaho, blew into Virginia City, Mont., in 1865, when Alder Gulch was at the height of its glory, and later struck the placers around Helena, where fortune smiled upon him.