118 ESSAYS. 
under the most favorable circumstances) during the whole 
of the first century, we should thereby reduce the estimated 
age toa thousand years. By the same computation, the Cy- 
press at Atlisco would be 3480 years old; or 2390 years, if 
we allow it the maximum rate of growth for the first century. 
So, likewise, the great Cypress at Santa Maria del Tule would 
be 5124 years of age, or 4024 years, with the aforesaid de- 
duction. The latter accords perfectly with De Candolle’s 
minimum estimate; and it is the lowest age that, in the pres- 
ent state of our knowledge, can possibly be assigned to this 
prodigious tree, upon the supposition that its trunk is really 
single. 
We are obliged to pass unnoticed those trees of unknown 
species, but of surprising size, which the learned and enthu- 
siastic Professor Martius visited in the interminable woods 
that border the Amazon, and of which he has recently pub- 
lished such a spirited account.!. Their trunks were so huge 
that the outstretched arms of fifteen men were required to 
grasp them; and so lofty, as to mock every effort for obtain- 
ing even a leaf or flower, by which the species might be de- 
termined. As to their age, Martius offers only a conjectural 
estimate. 
The Baobab, or Monkey-Bread (Adansonia digitata), of 
Senegal and the Cape de Verde Islands, has long afforded 
the most celebrated instances of vegetable longevity. The 
tree is remarkable for the small height which it attains, com- 
pared with the diameter of the trunk or the length of its 
branches. Trunks which are seventy or eighty feet in cir- - 
cumference rise to the height of only ten or twelve feet, when 
they divide into a great number of extremely large branches, 
fifty or sixty feet in length, which, spreading widely in every 
direction, form a hemisphere or hillock of verdure, perhaps 
one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and only seventy in 
elevation. To this peculiarity, rather than to the nature of 
the wood, which is light and soft, the great longevity of the 
tree is probably Bwine , its form opposing an effectual resist- 
1 “Flora Brasiliensis,” Tab. Physiog., ix. ; ‘‘ Arbores ante Christum 
natum enate.” 
