THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 39 
that it should furnish instances of extraordinary longevity. 
In comparative youth, the stem increases in diameter only at 
the rate of an eighth of an inch ina year. Therefore the 
Olive at Pescio, mentioned by De Candolle, having a trunk 
of twenty-four feet in girth, should be seven hundred years 
old ; even supposing it to have grown, throughout, at the 
ordinary rate for younger trees ; while the still larger tree at 
Beaulieu, near Nice, described by Risso, and recently meas- 
ured by Berthelot, doubtless the oldest of the race in Europe, 
should be more than a thousand years old. Although now in 
a state of decrepitude, it still bears an abundant crop of fruit, 
or at least did so, as late as the year 1828.1 It is not im- 
probable, therefore, that those eight venerable trees, which 
yet survive upon the Mount of Olives, may have been in 
existence, as tradition asserts, at the time of our Saviour’s 
passion. ' 
Let us now direct our attention to the class of coniferous 
trees, among which, on account of the resinous matters that 
commonly pervade their wood and teud to preserve it from 
decay, as well as for other reasons which we will not stop to 
explain, instances of longevity may be expected to occur not 
inferior to those already noticed. 
We begin with the classical cypress (Cupressus semper- 
virens), so celebrated in all antiquity for the incorruptibility 
of its wood and its funeral uses ; doubtless, one of the longest 
lived trees of southern Europe and of the East. Hunter, 
in his edition of Evelyn, about a century ago, mentions the 
fine avenue of Cypresses ‘Los Cupressos de la Reyna Sul- 
tana,” which adorns the garden of the Generaliffe at Gra- 
nada. Under their shade, according to the well-known legend, 
the last Moorish king of Granada surprised his wife with one 
of the Abencerrages, which led to the massacre of thirty-six 
princes of that race. This was, of course, before the year 
1492, the date of the final expulsion of the Moors. These 
enduring memorials of frailty and revenge were still flourish- 
ing in perennial vigor in 1831, when they were examined by 
1 Risso, “ Hist. Nat. Europ. Merid.,” ex Moquin-Tandon, “ Teratol. 
Veg.,” p. 105. 
