These facts are sufficient to show that it is by no means improbable, that the oaks now standing in Quatford were originally trees in the Forest of Morfe; if so, one of them may be the very tree which marked out to the Countess Adelissa the spot, adjacent to which she was to build the Church. Now among these oaks, one is of a very remarkable character. Time has so completely decayed the middle part of the tree, that the two portions of the trunk which remain have fallen asunder one from the other, and thus appear at first sight as two separate and distinct trees[9]—indeed, they are generally supposed to be so—but a closer examination will disprove this. It will be noticed that the bark is very much curled up, and if this could be unrolled, it would be found to belong to a trunk, the circumference of which would include the two parts now remaining. [9] That a single tree may be so decayed by time as to be divided into parts, and that these living parts may have the appearance of separate trees, we have a remarkable proof in the famous chestnut on Mount Etna, which was alive in the close of the last century. Gilpin in his “Forest Scenery” has the following description of it:—“It is still alive (1791), but it has lost much of its original dignity. Many travellers take notice of it. Brydone was the last who saw it. His account is dated about sixteen or seventeen years ago. It hath the appearance of five distinct trees. The space within them, he was assured, had been filled up with solid timber, where the whole formed only one tree. The possibility of this he could not at first conceive, for the five trees together contained a space of 204 feet in diameter. At length he was convinced, not only by the testimony of the country and the accurate examination of the Canon Recufero, a learned naturalist in those parts, but by the appearance of the trees, none of which had any bark on the inside. This chestnut is of such renown, that Brydone tells us he had seen it marked in an old map of Sicily, published an hundred years ago.”—(_B. 1., p. 135._) [Illustration] The above is a sketch of the tree in its present condition. Of course it would be very absurd, as well as unwarrantable, to assert that this is the hollow oak referred to in the narrative; but it is very likely, from its appearance, that the tree has been hollow for very many centuries; and this gives a degree of shadowy probability to the conjecture, enough to invest the speculation with some amount of interest.