THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 81 
considering it, not as a simple individual, like man or the 
higher animals, but as an aggregate of many individuals, 
which though ordinarily connected with the parent stock, are 
capable of growing by themselves, and indeed often do sepa- 
rate spontaneously, and in a variety of ways acquire indepen- 
dent existence. If, then, the tree be, as it undeniably is, a 
complex being, an aggregate of as many individuals, united 
in a common trunk, as there are, or have been, buds developed 
on its surface; and if the component individuals be annually 
renewed, why should not the aggregate, the tree, last indefi- 
nitely? To establish a proper analogy, we must not compare 
the tree with man, but with the coral formations, in which 
numberless individuals, engrafted and blended on a common 
base, though capable of living when detached from the mass, 
conspire to build up those arborescent structures so puzzling 
to the older naturalists that they were not inappropriately 
named ‘“ zodphytes,” or animal-plants. The immense coral- 
groves, which have thus grown up in tropical seas, have, no 
doubt, endured for ages ; the inner and older parts consisting 
of the untenanted cells of individuals that have long since 
perished, while fresh structures are continually produced on 
the surface. The individuals, indeed, perish; but the aggre- 
gate may endure as long as time itself. So with a tree, con- 
sidered under this point of view. Though the wood in the 
centre of the trunk and large branches — the produce of buds 
and leaves that have long ago disappeared — may die and de- 
cay ; yet while new individuals are formed upon the surface 
with each successive crop of fresh buds, and placed in as 
favorable communication with the soil and the air as their 
predecessors, the aggregate tree would appear to have no 
necessary, no inherent, limit to its existence.! 
1 A beautiful confirmation of this view may be drawn from the cele- 
brated Banyan, or India Fig-tree, and a few other tropical trees, which 
freely strike root, high in the open air, from their spreading branches. 
These aérial roots, after reaching the earth, become in time new trunks ; 
and the whole tree appears like a huge tent, supported by many columns. 
Milton’s description of the Banyan (in “ Paradise Lost ’’) is incorrect, 
so far as it supposes the bendizg branches themselves to reach the 
ground, and there to strike root, just as the gardener propagates shrubs 
