204 AGE OF CONIFERS. [BOOK i. 



Islands which had been observed by two English travellers 

 three centuries earlier : he found within its trunk the inscrip- 

 tion which they had engraved there covered over by three 

 hundred woody layers, and thus was enabled to estimate the 

 bulk by which this enormous plant had increased in three 

 centuries/! ! p. 1003. 



" Let us compare this account with Adanson's own words, 

 observing the passages we have noted in italics. 



" 'Those which I saw in 1749 on the Isles de la Made- 

 leine, near Cape Verd, with inscriptions of Dutch names, 

 such as Rew, and other, French names, the former dating 

 from the fourteenth and the latter from the fifteenth century, 

 which inscriptions I renewed, merely adding below them, 

 "renewed in 1749," were then about six feet in diameter. 

 These same trees were seen in 1555, that is to say, two 

 hundred years earlier, by Thevet, who notices them in the 

 account of his Voiage aux Teres Antarktikes, describing 

 them merely as "fine trees," without mentioning their 

 thickness, which must at least have been three or four feet, 

 judging from the little space occupied by the characters 

 forming the inscription ; they had, therefore, enlarged about 

 two or three feet in two hundred years.' Families des Plantes, 

 Preface, p. ccxvi." 



Of all natural orders of Plants that of Conifers exhibits the 

 most certain and instructive instances of longevity, concern- 

 which Professor Zuccarini's observations deserve to be quoted. 



" The Common Spruce and Silver Firs, and the Scotch Pine 

 not unfrequently live above 200 years ; and the Alpine Pines, 

 the Larches, and Cypresses are frequently at least 500 

 years old. De Candolle (Physiolog. Vegetal, ii. p. 1001.) 

 estimates the age of the largest yews as much greater. 

 Assuming that in the transverse section of this tree, includ- 

 ing both semi-diameters, each annual ring of the first 150 

 years of growth has a thickness of a French line, and after- 

 wards something less, he demonstrates from the given 

 measurements of the largest yews, especially in Great 

 Britain, that the stem of one growing at Fountains Abbey, 

 in Yorkshire, which was measured by Pennant, in 1770, and 

 found at that time to have a circumference of 6-6 feet, 



