33 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Southern States, and its rate of growth lias been determined. On the 

 Mexican table-lands its growth and antiquity are immense. 



The " Cypress of Montezuma," near the city of Mexico, is 44 feet 

 in girth, and its age is estimated at upward of twenty centuries. In 

 the church-yard of Santa Maria del Tule, in the Mexican State of 

 Oaxaca, is a cypress which "measures 112 feet in circuit, and is 

 without sign of decay." At Palenque are cypresses growing among 

 the ruins of the old city, whose streets they may have shaded in the 

 days of its pride. By the usual methods, the writer in the North 

 American Review calculates the age of the cypress at Santa Maria del 

 Tule at 5,124 years, or, if it grew as rapidly during its whole life as 

 similar trees grow when young, it would still be 4,024 years old. 



The yew has long been used in Great Britain as an adornment of 

 places of sepulture, and is often referred to in English literature : 



" Beneath these rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 

 Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap." 



This tree, of almost imperishable wood, is indigenous to Great 

 Britain. De Candolle ascertained its rate of growth, and concluded 

 that individual specimens are of great antiquity. There is a yew at 

 Ankerwyke House, older than Magna Charta. It was an old and cele- 

 brated tree when King John met the barons at Runnymede, in 1215, 

 and its age is upward of eleven centuries ; but the yews of Fountain's 

 Abbey and the Darley yew' are from three to five centuries older 

 than this. In Fortingal Church-yard, Perthshire, is a yew 18 feet in 

 diameter, through decayed portions of which funeral processions pass 

 on their way to the grave. The age of this tree is estimated at 1,800 

 years. But of greater antiquity is the one described by Evelyn, which 

 stood in Braborne Church-yard, in Kent. It measured 59 feet in 

 girth, and was believed to be 2,500 years old. This tree, which has 

 long disappeared, was probably contemporary with the founding of 

 Rome. The growth and decline of a great empire was spanned by the 

 duration of a single life. 



More immense in bulk, but perhaps not older than these living- 

 monuments, are the pines of Oregon and the Sequoias of California. 

 Mr. Douglas counted 1,100 annual layers in a Lambert pine, and 300 

 feet is not an unusual height for the Douglas spruce. Hutchings 

 states that a Sequoia, which was blown down and measured by him, 

 was 435 feet in length. It was 18 feet in diameter 300 feet from the 

 around. Scientific observation has connected with these trees an in- 

 terest equal to that awakened by their size and age. Our most dis- 

 tinguished botanist, Prof. Gray, has shown that the Sequoias, now 

 growing on a limited area, had formerly a wide distribution, and 

 are lineal descendants from ancestral types which flourished at least 

 as far back in geologic time as the Cretaceous age. The descent 

 has been with modifications furnishing an important link in the 



