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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Fig. 7. Hall of Monoliths. 



surpassing the big sequoias of California. The height, however, as may 

 be seen from the picture, is not so great. Botanically, the tree is 

 Taicodium macronatum, and it is commonly called the Montezuma 

 cypress. The Noche triste tree in the City of Mexico belongs to the 

 same species. The swamp cypress of our southern states, Taxodium 

 distichum, belongs to the same genus, but not to the same species. 

 Without trying to find any fault with the tree, one might hazard the 

 suggestion that it may represent three trees grown together so that 

 nothing but peculiarities in the branching remain to indicate a 

 multiple origin. The Humboldt inscription, placed there by the great 

 explorer, is on the opposite side of the tree from that shown in the 

 picture, but is now almost entirely overgrown. There have evidently 

 been other inscriptions, but they too are overgrown, and a formidable 

 tablet warns the public against defacing the tree, perhaps referring 

 to the vicious American habit of cutting unimportant names in con- 

 spicuous places. There are recent tablets, flat on the ground at the 

 base of the tree, with large letters made of the teeth of cattle. If it is 

 all one tree, its age could not be less than three or four thousand years. 

 In the same churchyard there is another Montezuma cypress, twelve 

 feet in diameter, which shows not only in its general habit, but in its 

 branching, that it is a single tree. 



The road from Tule to Mitla is sandy and dusty, but the scenery 



