114 ESSA YS. 



Still more gigantic — the Nestor of the race, if not of the 

 whole vegetable kingdom — is the Cypress which stands in 

 the churchyard of the village of Santa Maria del Tule, in the 

 intendancy of Oaxaca, two and a half leagues east of that 

 city, on the road to Guatemala by the way of Tehuantepec. 

 In its neighborhood there are five or six other trees of the 

 kind, which are nearly as large as the " Cypress of Monte- 

 zuma," but which this one as much surpasses as that does 

 the ordinary denizens of the forest. We possess three inde- 

 pendent measurements of this enormous trunk. The first is 

 that given by Humboldt, who states, probably on the author- 

 ity of his informant, M. Anza, that the trunk is thirty-six 

 metres (one hundred and eighteen English feet) in circum- 

 ference. In the year 1827, Mr. Poinsett, then our minister 

 at the court of Mexico, transmitted to the American Philo- 

 sophical Society at Philadelphia a cord which represented the 

 exact circumference of this tree. Its extraordinary length 

 naturally excited some doubts as to the correctness of the 

 measurement ; and immediate application was made to Mr. 

 Poinsett for further particulars. He accordingly transmitted 

 a communication from Mr. Exter, an English traveler who had 

 just returned from Oaxaca, and who had carefully examined 

 the tree in question. Mr. Exter's letter was afterwards pub- 

 lished in Loudon's " Magazine of Natural History " ; and a 

 French translation, accompanied by some interesting com- 

 ments by the younger De Candolle, appeared in the " Biblio- 

 theque Universelle" for 1831. 1 According to Mr. Exter's 

 measurement, the trunk is forty-six varas — one hundred 

 and twenty-two English feet — in circumference ; which is 

 nearly in accordance with Humboldt's account. In neither 

 case is the height at which the trunk was measured expressly 

 mentioned. But this point has been duly attended to by a 

 recent scientific observer, M. Galeotti, who visited this cele- 

 brated tree in 1839 and in 1840, and whose careful measure- 

 ment gives to the trunk the circumference of one hundred 

 and five French (equal to one hundred and twelve English) 



1 Tom. xlvi., p. 387. 



