Page 4 Advertisements Column 2

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 287, 28 November 1908, Page 4

THE OLDEST LIVJXU TIIIXG. California is excited just now because its "big troos —best, known over here through a wine advertisement—are lo be cut down. The desecration is not because they are dangerous, hut simply and solely on ncconnt of their value as timber. Each of them is n " mine of lumber/' and »o most of them are to be felled. However, one group, situated in the Mariposa County, is to .be preserved. These mastodons of the vegetable kingdom measure as much as a hundred feet in girth at the bottom, and are between :JOO and -!!)() feet tall, so that they easily take precedence over every other living tiling on earth as regards mere size. It has recently been asserted, too. that they are also the oldest of living things. But this is not quite correct. Many of thein undoubtedly date back to the time of Abraham and the Egyptian " sheplu-i'd kings." Vet even theae are fpiitc "giddy young things" compared with certain of the cypress trees of Mexico.

One of this family, standing in Cliftpiiltepee, liiis been proved by exports ill forestry to lie eerUiinlv not less tlian «,200 years old. To it,, therefore, mint be accorded tin: distinction of being absolutely the oldest thing left alive U[ioii the rnrUi tu-day. Tile nio-sl patriarchal trees in Britain, it is claimed, is the famous (.\nvth»n" 4 oak, in Yorkshire, which is over I.OHO years old. "Next to it conies the (Jrce.idale oak. near AYelheek' Abbev, ostimate.i to he 1 -000 years old. This latter is, however, now a mere .shell, -supported by prop*, ifs hollow interior beiiiX so badly decayed that a coach has been driven through it. Dumoreys oak, in Dorsetshire, blown down in 1703, was found, by carefully counting the concentric rings, to bo not less than 2,000 years oW. ,

WMJJ