_John of Halifax_ (Vol. iii., p. 389.; Vol. v., p. 42.).--Since every country has its _Holywood_, and _de Sacrobosco_ does not distinguish Holy_wood_ from Hali_fax_, John of Halifax has been claimed both by Ireland and Scotland, and, if I remember right, by some foreign countries. The manuscripts of his works, as well as the earlier printed editions, call him _Anglus_ or _Anglicus_; and he lived in a time at which the natives of the three countries were as distinct as Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians. Bale, quoting Leland, calls him Halifax; as does Tanner: Pits gives his birth to Halifax. He was buried in the Maturin convent at Paris, where his epitaph existed in the sixteenth century. Pits implies that it appears from the epitaph that he died in 1256: Mæstlinus expressly affirms that it can be collected from the epitaph, in the _Ad Lectorem_ of his _Epitome Astronomiæ_. All the authorities believe him to be English; and Leland thought he traced him as a student at Oxford. But had the manuscripts called him anything but English, the other evidence would not have weighed them down; for there are plenty of Holywoods, and there was, notoriously, a press of foreign students to Oxford in the thirteenth century. But name and residence in England may come in aid of the manuscripts. The statement that he died in 1244 probably arises as follows. In the epitaph, according to Pits, are the following lines:-- M. Christi bis C quarto deno quater anno De Sacrobosco discrevit tempora Ramus Gratia cui nomen dederat divina Johannis, meaning that in 1244 a bough from the holy wood _discrevit tempora_. This Pits calls an obscure reference to the time of his death, in the same sentence in which he places that time in 1256. Very obscure indeed, if a reference to his death in 1256 be intended. But if _discrevit tempora_ refer, not to death, but to the matter of his celebrated work _de anni ratione, seu ... computus Ecclesiasticus_, there is no obscurity at all. And at the end of a Merton manuscript of this _computus_, Tanner found the preceding lines inserted; the copyist taking them to allude, of course, to the date of the book. M. _Age of Trees_ (Vol. iv., p. 401.).--Your correspondent L. inquires after authentic evidence respecting the age of ancient trees: "In the 12th vol. of Loudon's _Gardener's Magazine_, p. 588., the Cowthorpe Oak [standing at the extremity of the village of Cowthorpe, near Wetherby in Yorkshire], is said to be 'undoubtedly the largest tree at present known in the kingdom.'