THE VAST. 



from twenty to twenty-five feet thick, which he 

 says were the largest he saw. Ferrottet, in his 

 " Flora of Seneganibia,'' declares that he had seen 

 some thirty-two feet in diameter, and seventy to 

 eighty leet high. Golberry found specimens at- 

 taining thirty-six feet in diameter, yet but sixty- 

 four feet in height. And Aloysius Cadamosto, 

 who was the first to describe the tree, found 

 specimens whose circumference he estimated at 

 seventeen fathoms, which would give a diameter 

 of thirty-four feet.» 



A kind of cypress, growing in Oaxaca, in Mexico, 

 has attained great celebrity among botanists, 

 De Candolle having stated its diameter at sixty 

 feet. Humboldt, who speaks from personal ex- 

 amination, an advantage which the great botanist 

 did not possess, reduces it to forty feet six inches 

 — a very enormous bulk, however, still. 



A recent traveller in Venezuela, thus notices a 

 tree of remarkable dimensions : — 



"Soon after leaving Turmero, we caught sight 

 of the far-famed Zamang del Guayre, and in about 

 an hour's time arrived at the hamlet of El Guayre, 

 from whence it takes its name. It is supposed to 

 be the oldest tree in the world, t for so great was 

 the reverence of the Indians for it on account of 

 its age at the time of the Spanish Conquest, that 

 the Government issued a decree for its protection 

 from all injury, and it has ever since been public 

 property. It shews no sign whatever of decay, 

 but is as fresh and green as it was most probably 

 a thousand years ago. The trunk of this magnifi- 

 cent tree is only sixty feet high, by thirty feet in 

 circumference, so that it is not so much the enor- 

 mous size of the Zamang del Guayre that consti- 



* See Humboldt's kk Aspects of Nature." 

 t This is probably the exaggeration of local prejudice. 

 133 



