ILLUSTRATIONS (12). THE COLOSSAL DRAGON-TREE. 269 



with African or Asiatic nations: The form of the Dracamce is 

 repeated on the southern extremity of Africa, in the Isle of 

 Bourbon, in China, and in New Zealand. In these remotely 

 distant regions Ave recognise species of the same genus, but 

 none are to be found in the New Continent, where this form 

 is supplied by the Yucca. The Dracaena boreal is of Aiton is a 

 true Convallaria, the nature of both being perfectly identical.^ 



I have given a representation, in the last plate of the 

 Picturesque Atlas of my American journey, t of the dragon- 

 tree of Orotava, taken from a drawing made in 1776 by 

 F. d'Ozonne, and which I found among the posthumous papers 

 of the celebrated Borda, in the still imprinted journal en- 

 trusted to me by the Depot de la Marine, and from which I 

 have borrowed important astronomically-determined geogra- 

 phical, data besides many barometrical and trigonometrical 

 notices. £ The measurement of the dragon-tree in the Villa 

 Franqui was made in Borda's first voyage with Pingre in 

 1771, and not in the second, made 1776 with Varela. It 

 is asserted, that in the fifteenth century, during the early 

 periods of the Norman and Spanish conquests, mass was 

 performed at a small altar erected in the hollow trunk of 

 this tree. Unfortunately, the Dracsena of Orotava lost one 

 side of its leafy top in the storm of the 21st of July, 1819. 

 There is a fine large English copper-plate engraving, which 

 gives an exceedingly true representation of the present con- 

 dition of the tree. 



The monumental character of these colossal living forms, 

 and the impression of reverence which they have created 

 among all nations, have led, in modern times, to a more care- 

 ful study of the numerical determination of their age, and of 

 the size of their trunks. The results of such investigations in- 

 duced the elder Decandolle, (the author of the important 

 treatise, entitled De la Longevite desArbres.) Endlicher, Unger, 

 and other distinguished botanists to conjecture, that the age 

 of many existing vegetable forms may extend to the earliest 

 historical times, if not to the records of the Nile, at least 

 to those of Greece and Italy. In the Bibliotheque Universale 



* Humboldt, Relat. hist, t. i. pp. 118, 639. 



■f Vues des Cordilleres et Jfonumens des peuples indigenes de 

 VAmerique, pi. lxix. 



% Relat. hist., t. \., p. 2S2. 



