122 ESSAYS. 
below the truth. As to its rate of growth when young, he 
states that the tree acquires the diameter of an inch or an 
inch and a half in the first year; the diameter of a foot in ten 
years, and about a foot and a half in thirty years; but so far 
from having extended these data, and employed them in the 
manner which is attributed to him, he says, that, although it 
might be desirable thus to employ them, a sound geometry 
teaches that they are quite insufficient for the purpose. 
Hence, instead of attempting any precise determination, he 
merely offers the probable conjecture, that these largest 
Baobabs may have been in existence several thousand years, 
or nearly from the period of the universal deluge ; which 
would give them a claim to be considered the most ancient 
living monuments in the world. 
We cannot learn that Adanson ever made any further 
statements upon the subject; and, as he never revisited the 
African coast, he cannot have collected additional facts. His 
original writings plainly show that he never pretended to 
have obtained the data and made the estimates which have 
so long been attributed to him, To whom belongs the credit 
of falsifying his testimony we are unable to ascertain, as the 
authors above mentioned do not cite their immediate author- 
ity ;— perhaps to one M. Duchesne, whose name the elder 
De Candolle has casually alluded to, as having drawn up a 
table, exhibiting the diameter of the Baobab at different 
* periods, doubtless upon the very plan that Adanson pointed 
out and condemned. We are only surprised that such accu- 
rate and judicious writers as the De Candolles, father and 
son, should have relied upon second-hand authorities in any 
ease where the originals were accessible, and especially in 
what they term “ the most celebrated case of extreme longevity 
that has yet been observed with precision.” ? 
1 “Mém. Acad. Sciences,’ 1761, p. 231 ; and “Encyel. Suppl.,” vol. 
i. p. 798. 
2 A passage which has met our eye in Mirbel’s “ Elémens de Physiolo- 
gie Végétale,” i. p. 116, shows that no such data as those which have 
been, as we suppose, falsely assumed, were known to that author down 
to the year 1815, 
