THE celebrated Sycamore-maple, AcerPseu-do-Platanus, stands near the entrance of the village of Trons, in the Grisons, the cradle of liberty in the Rhcetian Alps; under the once spreading branches of this now hollow and cloven trunk, the Gray League was solemnly ratified in 1424. Upon the supposition that it was only a century old when the meeting to which its celebrity is owing, took place, - and a younger tree would hardly be selected for the purpose, - it has now attained the age of 533 years. It can scarcely be younger, it may be much older than this. In some of the earlier accounts, this tree is said to be a Linden; they were better patriots than botanists in those days, for the investigations of Colonel Bonternps leave no doubt as to the identity of the tree.

The Linden in the town of Friburg, which was planted in 1476 to commemorate the bloody battle of Morat, though now beginning to decay, has already proved a more durable memorial than the famous ossuary of the battle field, "Where Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host A bony heap through ages to remain, Themselves their monument; - " and may even outlast the obelisk recently erected upon its site. The age of this tree and the girth of its trunk being well known, - having attained the circumference of fourteen English feet in 364 years, - it has been employed as a standard of comparison, in computing the age of larger and more venerable trunks of the same species. Such a tree is still standing near the town of Morat in full vigor, although portions of its bark are known to have been stripped off about the time of the battle in 1476, when it was already a noted tree. At four feet above the ground the trunk has a circumference of thirty-eight English feet, and consequently a diameter of about twelve feet; supposing it to have grown a little more rapidly than the Friburg Linden, which may be deemed a safe estimate when we recollect that old trees grow much more slowly than younger ones, - supposing it to have increased in diameter at the average rate of one-sixth of an inch in a year, it must have been 864 years old at the time the measurement was made in 1831. It is not probable that this estimate materially exaggerates the age of the tree, even supposing the Linden at Friburg to have grown at less than the average rate of the species.

It is nearly corroborated, indeed, by the more celebrated Linden at Neustadt on the Kocher, in Wnrtemburg, whose age rests wholly on historic evidence. Evelyn, it will be remembered, mentions it, and Trembly visited it in 1831, at the instance of the illustrious De Candolle. It was already remarkable early in the 13th century, for documents prove that the village of Helmbundt having been destroyed in 1226, was rebuilt three years afterwards, at some distance from its former site, in the vicinity of this tree, and took the name of Neustadt an der grossen Linden. An old poem of 1408 informs us that "before the gate rises a Linden, whose branches are sustained by 67 columns." The number of these columns, or pillars of stone, raised to support the heavy and widely spreading branches, one of which extends horizontally for more than a hundred feet, had increased to 82 when the tree was visited by Evelyn, and to 106 when examined by Trembley. To these supports, doubtless, its preservation is chiefly owing. They are nearly covered with inscriptions, of which the most ancient in Evelyn's time bore the date of 1551, but the oldest now legible is dated 1558. At five or six feet from the ground the tree is 35 1/2 English feet in circumference.

If, therefore, it has grown at the actual rate of the Friburg Linden, it must have reached its thousandth anniversary; or if we allow a sixth of an inch per annum its age would be a little over 800 years; surely, a moderate estimate for a tree which was called the Great Linden more than six centuries ago.

The famous Chestnut in Sicily, according to Brydone, who visited it in 1770, had trunks, for it had then the appearance of five distinct trees, measuring 204 feet in circumference; but later and more trustworthy observers reduce these dimensions to 185 feet. A hut has been erected in the hollow space, with an oven, in which the inhabitants dry the chestnuts, and other fruits, using at times, for fuel, pieces cut with a hatchet from the interior of the tree. The separation of a large hollow trunk into independent portions, appearing like the remains of as many distinct trees, is not in itself improbable, but it is probable that these present trunks were offshoots from a more ancient stem.

Mount AEtna has some colossal chestnuts with undoubtedly single trunks, three of which recently measured are found to have a circumference respectively of 57, 64, and 70 feet.

But the Oak, the emblem of embodied strength, and one of the longest-lived, as it is the slowest growing of deciduous forest trees, "Lord of the wood, the long-surviving Oak," has been most observed. Among the oldest specimens now extant in England are to be enumerated the "Parliament Oak,"in Glipstone Park, supposed to be the oldest Park in England; this tree derives its name from a Parliament having been held under it by Edward the First, in 1290; the "Cow-thorpe Oak" in Yorkshire, the trunk of which measures 78 feet in circumference near the ground, and whose age is estimated as nearly coeval with the Christian era; another in Northamptonshire, the Salcey Forest Oak, is perhaps of equal antiquity. A tree at Bordza, felled some forty years ago, was proved by its annual layers to have been about 1000 years old; this was a goodly oak, but it shrinks into insignificance when compared-with one in the south of France, which, according to an account in Professor Lindley's Gardener's Chronicle, whose trunk has a circumference from 85 to 94 feet; at the height of a man, from 60 to 67 feet. The diameter of the whole head, from 40 to 43 yards; the height of the trunk 8 yards; the general height of the tree 22 yards.

Upon a plate of wood taken from the trunk about the height of the door of the room hollowed into it, 200 annual rings have been counted, whence it results, in taking a horizontal radius from the exterior circumference to the centre of the oak, that there must have been from 1,800 to 2,000 of these rings; which makes its age nearly 2000 years. Rich although North America is, above all other parts of the world, in different species of oak, it would not be difficult to explain why we cannot boast such venerable treed, "Whose boughs are mossed with age, And high tops bald with dry antiquity".

It is chiefly that in clearing away the forest which so recently covered the soil, "men were famous according as they had lifted up axes upon the thick trees." The close, stifling growth of our primeval forests, like the democratic institutions which they seem to foreshadow, although favorable to mediocrity, forbids preeminence. "A chilly, cheerless, everlasting shade," prevents the fullest individual development; and even if the woodman's axe had spared the older trees, their high-drawn trunks, no longer shielded by the dense ray of their brethren, were sure to be overthrown by the winds. Had the aboriginal inhabitants been tillers of the ground, our White Oaks had long since spread their broad arms, and emulated their more renowned brethren in the Parks of England. The "Wadsworth Oak" may claim a higher antiquity, and the "Charter Oak" of Hartford was probably only a sapling at the first settlement of our country. Bartram measured a Live Oak from 12 to 18 feet in girth, and mentions "some of 18 or 20, each limb forming a gentle curve from its base to its extremity.

I have stepped" he says, "above 50 paces, on a straight line, from the trunk of one to the extremity of the limbs".

Michaux mentions a tree felled near Charleston, whose trunk was 24 feet in circumference. The Olive grows more slowly than the Oak; one mentioned by De Candolle had a trunk 24 feet in girth, and was believed to be TOO years old; another 1000 years. Upon the Mount of Olives there is said to be still living eight venerable specimens of the Olive, which may have been in existence, as tradition asserts, at the time of our Saviour's passion. A Cypress tree at Somna, in Lombardy, figured by Loudon, according to tradition was planted in the year of our Saviour's birth. Even Napoleon deviated from a direct line to avoid injuring it, when laying down the plan of the great road over the Simplon. Its trunk was 20 feet in girth in 1832.

There is an ancient chronicle at Milan which proves this tree to have been in existence in the time of Julius Caesar!

When Prince de Joinville visited Mount Lebanon in 1836, one of his officers stated that all but one of the sixteen old Cedars mentioned by Maundrell are still alive, although in a decaying state; and that one of the healthiest, but perhaps the smallest trunks, measured 36 English feet in circumference, but he does not say at what height. De Candolle deems the trees to have been nearly 900 years old. This estimate may falf considerably below the truth, but our present knowledge will not warrant the assumption of a higher one. Doubtless this remarkable forest has existed from primeval times, while the oldest individuals, from age to age, have decayed and disappeared.

Of the yews at Fountains Abbey, 1200 years seems a fair estimate of their age; that at Dryburgh 600 years; the "Darley Yew" 1350 years; one in Dorsetshire 1600 years; and one long since disappeared, if the rule applied to the growth of this tree holds good, which was 2,540 years old at the time of its death. The trunk of the "Fortingal Yew" in Scotland was 52 feet in circumference iu 1769, and still survives; in all probability it was a flourishing tree at the commencement of the Christian era.

The Lambert Pine of California attains a great age; we have calculated one mentioned by Douglass at 1,100 years. The great Cypress of Mexico at Atlisco, has a girth of 76 English feet. But this is greatly surpassed by one, the measurement of which is mentioned by Uumboldt, 118 English feet in circumference. This tree has excited much interest; our Minister, Mr. Poinsett, was requested by the American Philosophical Society to give further particulars. He transmitted a communication from Mr. Exter, an English traveler who had carefully examined the tree in question, who gives the circumference of the trunk as 122 English feet. This has been substantially confirmed since, and others are mentioned of equal size.

The "Cypress of Montezuma" may have existed for twenty-seven centuries, but 2000 years is quite within bounds. De Candolle the younger, infers that the great Cypress of Santa Maria del Tule, if really the growth of a single trunk, is from 5000 to 6000 years old; the lowest estimate is about 4050 years; and here, without following Dr. Gray, or touching upon the more recent discoveries of the Washingtonia in California, we close our condensed account, only adding that the Baobabs of Senegambia arc esteemed to be 5000 or 6000 years old. Its roots have been traced to a distance of more than a 100 feet without reaching their extremity; and these trees, it has been conjectured, may have been in existence several thousand years, or . nearly from the period of the universal? deluge, being thus the most ancient living monuments of the world; compared with these monumental living trees the mouldering relics of the earliest Egyptian civilization are but structures of yesterday.