102 ESSAYS. 
measured. We have little faith, however, in this particular 
identification ; nor do we place confidence in the rate of growth 
of old Cedars, as deduced from the measurement of these trees 
at different periods. For, could we be sure that any two of 
these measurements were actually taken from the same trunk, 
it is still very unlikely that they were made at the same height 
from the ground, — a matter of great consequence, but which 
is left out of view in the records of the early travelers. But 
the girth of the larger trees being known by various measure- 
ments, and the average rate of growth of young Cedars being 
approximately determined from individuals that have grown 
in Europe, of well ascertained age and size, — such, for in- 
stance, as those in the Chelsea Botanic Garden, near London, 
planted in 1683, and the fine tree which adorns the hill in the 
Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and which was brought from 
England in 1734 by Bernard de Jussieu, — carried, it is 
said, in the crown of his hat for greater security, whose trunk, 
at its centennial anniversary, had just attained the cireumfer- 
ence of ten feet, — we only need to know the thickness of the 
outer layers of these remarkable old trunks, or, in other 
words, their actual and recent rate of increase, in order to 
form a highly probable estimate of their age. By a few care- 
ful incisions into these trunks, the next traveler into the now 
frequented East, who feels interested in such questions, might 
supply this remaining desideratum, without real injury to 
these renowned natural monuments, or just exposure to the 
Patriarch’s anathema. 
From such very imperfect data as we now possess, De 
Candolle deems the trees measured by Rauwolf to have been 
at least six hundred years old; which would give the age of 
nearly nine hundred years to any of the number that may 
still survive. This estimate may fall considerably below the 
truth ; but our present knowledge will not warrant the as- 
sumption of a higher one. Doubtless, this remarkable forest 
has existed from primeval times, while the oldest individuals, 
from age to age, have decayed and disappeared. But vener- 
able as are the present representatives, which La Martine so 
grandiloquently apostrophizes, and conceives to have existed 
