THE WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 185 



From this statement we might form a guess as to the 

 age of this famous tree, remembering at the same time 

 how slowly it grows. Berthelot says, in comparing the 

 young dragon-trees in the neighborhood with this gi- 

 ant : " The calculation which we make as to the age 

 of the latter inflame the imagination." 



The dragon-tree has been cultivated from the re- 

 motest times, in the Canaries, Madeira, in Porto-Santa ; 

 and a very careful botanist, Leopold Yon Buch, has seen 

 it growing wild in the island of Teneriffe ; it is not, 

 therefore, as people have for a long time believed, a 

 native of the East Indies. It is found at the Cape of 

 Good Hope, on the Isle de Bourbon, in China and in 

 New Zealand. Different varieties of this tree are 

 found in these remote countries ; but it does not exist 

 at all in the New World. Aiton's Dracaena of the 

 north is nothing more than a Convallaria. Borda 

 measured the dragon-tree of the Yilla Franqui in 

 1771. It is said that in the fifteenth century, soon 

 after the Spanish conquest, mass was celebrated on a 

 little altar that had been erected in the hollow of its 

 trunk.* 



The monumental character of these plants, and the 

 degree of respect with which they are regarded, have 

 made naturalists curious to ascertain their age and to 

 measure more exactly their dimensions. De Candolle, 

 linger, and other distinguished botanists, do not hesi- 

 tate to state that many dragon-trees now existing date 

 back to the earliest periods of our history, to a time, 



* Unfortunately, this famous tree was completely destroyed 

 by a hurricane in the autumn of 1837. 



