THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 507 



garlands of which entwine from branch to branch, and dis- 

 appear amid the foliage of the trees without our being able 

 to see either the beginning or the end, Pliny maintained 

 that they grow forever. Vites sine fine crescunt, said the 

 Roman naturalist. 



But we have more precise data as to the size of sundry 

 other plants. Thus in the virgin forests of India, the Cala- 

 mus Rotang, which climbs upon the trunks of aged trees, 

 and stretches from one to another, sinking to the ground 

 to rise again, attains, according to the traveller Loureiro, a 

 length of 400 or 500 feet. 



The Gigantic Fucus (Fucus giganteus, Linn.) reaches 

 much more extraordinary proportions ; the waves of the 

 ocean, according to Humboldt, yield strips which are some- 

 times 1500 to 1600 feet long. 



In an interesting article in the " Revue Germanique," 

 M. A. Boscowitz says that in the botanical garden of Caracas 

 there was a Convolvulus which in six months attained the 

 incredible length of 6000 feet. 



It must therefore have grown at the rate of more than a 

 foot per hour, and its growth must have been visible to the 

 naked eye ! 



CHAPTER III. 



VEGETABLE LONGEVITY. 



BUT if anything ought to astonish us in the life of trees 

 it is their longevity ; we might even go farther, and speak 

 of the principle of eternity which is clearly latent in some 



