Note 9 — THE ANTIQUITIES OF BRIDGNORTH. PART I.

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.)