THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 115 
feet, at the height of four feet above the surface of the soil. 
The previous measurements, therefore, were taken somewhat 
nearer the base. The tree as yet shows no signs of decay, 
although it bears less foliage in proportion to its size than 
its younger fellows. But we find no authority for Mr. Exter’s 
statement, that this tree was mentioned by Cortés, and that 
its shade once afforded shelter to his whole European army. 
Perhaps he had in some way confounded it in his memory 
with a Cypress which the Conquistador passed on the march 
to Mexico, and which is still traditionally associated with 
his name. s 
Mr. Exter reports, and the observations of recent travelers 
to some extent confirm the statement, that there are Cypresses 
near the ruins of Palenque, equal in size to the tree at Santa 
Maria del Tule. If this be so, they may claim a much higher 
antiquity than the ruins they overshadow. They must have 
witnessed the rise, the flourishing existence, the decline, and 
the final extinction of a race whose whole history has sunk 
into oblivion; while they are still alive. 
By what means can we ascertain the age of large Cypress- 
trees? Some years since, when Professor Alphonse De Can- 
dolle — the son and worthy successor of the botanist who has 
rendered that name illustrious — attempted to answer this 
question, the only evidence within his reach was drawn from 
the rate at which trees of the kind had grown in France during 
half a century. He inferred that the American Cypress, in 
its early days, increases at the rate of about a foot in diameter 
every fifty years ; and the estimate, although surely much too 
low for trees planted in favorable open situations (which have 
even been known to add annually an inch to their diameter 
for a series of years, both in Europe and in the United States), 
is yet quite as high as our own observations will allow for 
those which grow in their native forests. This rate would 
give to the Cypress of Montezuma the age of about seven cen- 
turies, and would render that at Oaxaca scarcely coeval with 
1 « Bulletin de l’Acad. Roy. des Sciences de Bruxelles,” 1843, tom. x. 
* p. 123. 
4 2 See Prescott’s “ History of the Conquest,” i. p, 404. 
