STRUCTURE.] AGE OF TAXODIUM. 205 



would contain 1214 annual rings, and would consequently 

 be that number of years old. Another in the churchyard of 

 Crowhurst, in Kent, would possess 1458 annual rings ; one 

 in the churchyard of Fotheringhay, in Scotland, measuring 

 5 8' 6 feet in circumference, 2588; and one in the churchyard of 

 Brayburn, in Kent, according to the measurement of Evelyn, 

 in 1660, would at that time have attained an age of 2880 

 rings or years. 



" Lastly, enormous trunks of Taxodium distichum are met 

 with both in Florida and in Southern Louisiana, as well as 

 in Mexico. Michaux mentions some of these stems of forty 

 feet in circumference above the rounded, enlarged base, 

 which was three or four times that size. The so-called 

 Cypress of Montezuma, in the garden of Chapultepec 

 (Mexico), measures forty-one feet (English) in circumference. 

 But all these dwindle to nothing before the gigantic trunk 

 near Santa Maria de Tesla, in the province of Oaxaca, which 

 was first mentioned by Exter, who found its circumference to 

 be 117 f 10 feet (French). With respect to this account, 

 however, De Candolle thought that either several trees might 

 have grown together, or were this not the case, that the 

 measurement had been taken round the dilated base of the 

 trunk. By the kindness of Baron Von Karwinski, who twice 

 measured this tree and has sent me a drawing of it, I am 

 enabled to remove these doubts. The measurement was 

 always taken above the dilatation, and on each occasion the 

 size was found somewhat to exceed 117 feet. The dilated 

 base was not measured, but from the drawing it must have a 

 circumference of at least 200 feet, and thus the diameter of 

 the trunk must be about 37 '2 feet, and of the enlarged base 

 about 60-5 feet. The dilated base surrounds the whole trunk 

 equally, so that it cannot readily be supposed that the size is 

 owing to the accretion of several trunks. Now if we take 

 as a basis for computation the statement of Michaux, given 

 by De Candolle, that the most thriving specimen of the tree 

 in France attained in forty-five years a diameter of one foot 

 or 144 lines, and consequently, that annual rings were formed 

 of the thickness of 3 % 2 lines, and supposing a similar increase 

 of wood to occur up to the most recent period of growth, it 



