There are, of course, trees in the world that have
attained thrice this age. It is said, though I doubt the evidence, that the dragon tree (a quaint, broomlike thing) within the garden of Government House at Gibraltar is a thousand years old. It may be; after all, the list of Governors of Gibraltar is complete from about a.n. 670, and the Moors cared for the place as fondly as their successors the Spaniards and British. The olive trees of Majorca, whose physiognomy surpasses the best gargoyles of mediaeval masons, have probably lived a thousand years. Springing from that rocky soil, they seem to have imbued their tissue with its granite quality. We have nothing in England to compare with these, except in appearance. No old trees of any species in any quarter of the world so boast the vigour of their age as our older oaks. Some of those in Hatfield Park or at Aldermaston (where reaches the edge of old Windsor Forest) still send out heavy boughs as nearly as possible at right angles to the trunk, quite defying all the laws of strain as observed by lesser trees. They brag of their sinews even at the age of seven hundred years or so.
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