Fig. 4. Chestnut Tree, near the Trail to Buck Spring Lodge, Pisgah Forest, North Carolina. This tree measured eighteen feet in circumference. Photograph supplied by the United States Forest Service.
The trunks of two of these Sicilian trees measured sixty-four and seventy feet in circumference: and at the end of the last century the low trunk of. . . the largest of the trees had a circumference of nearly two hundred feet at the surface of the ground. . . . Trees with trunks from twenty to thirty feet in circumference and believed to be at least a thousand years old, are not uncommon in southern Europe, where the chestnut is the largest, and with the exception perhaps of the olive, the longest lived inhabitant of the forest.
The above quotations apply of course to the European chestnut. In North. America large trees of the native species are also not rare (Figs. 3 and 4). Although definite data as to their ages are wanting, they show enough for our purpose, namely, that the American chestnut shares in the family characteristic of extreme longevity enjoyed by its European relative.
