THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 113 
serve very well for bee-hives! A small space of the tree it- 
self is hollow, nearly as high as the buttresses already men- 
tioned. From this place the tree, as it were, takes another 
beginning, forming a great, straight column, eighty or ninety 
feet high ; when it divides every way around into an exten- 
sive, flat, horizontal top, like an umbrella, where eagles have 
their secure nests, and cranes and storks their temporary rest- 
ing-places. And what adds to the magnificence of their ap- 
pearance is the streamers of long moss that hang from the 
lofty limbs, and float in the winds.” (Bartram’s “ Travels 
through Carolina, Georgia, etc.,” p. 91.) 
In favorable situations, the tree sometimes attains the 
height of one hundred and twenty, or one hundred and forty 
feet, and a circumference of from twenty to forty feet, when 
measured quite above the singular dilated base. This is 
scarcely exceeded by the largest of the celebrated Cypresses 
in the gardens of Chapultepec, at Mexico, called the ‘ Cypress 
of Montezuma,” and which was already a remarkable tree in 
the palmy days of that unfortunate monarch, three and a 
half centuries ago. The girth of its trunk is forty-one feet, 
according to Mr. Ward,! or about forty-five, according to Mr. 
Exter; but its height is so great in proportion, that the 
whole mass appears light and graceful. 
But this tree is greatly surpassed by the famous “ Ahue- 
huete ” (the Mexican name for the species) of the village of 
Atlisco, in the intendancy of Puebla, which was first described 
by Lorenzana from personal observation. The worthy Arch- 
bishop says that “the cavity of the trunk ” —for the tree is 
hollow — “ might contain twelve or thirteen men on horse- 
back ; and that, in the presence of the most illustrious Arch- 
bishop of Guatemala and the Bishop of Puebla, more than a 
hundred boys entered it.”* The girth of the trunk, according 
to Humboldt, is a little over twenty-three metres, or seventy- 
six English feet, and the diameter of the cavity about sixteen 
feet.? 
1 «Travels in Mexico,” ii. p. 230. 
2 Note to the Third Despatch of Cortes. This note is not found in 
Mr. Folsom’s translation. 
8 « Essai Polit. Nouv. Esp.,” ed. 2, ii. p. 54. 
