THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 119 



ance to the tempests which would overthrow ordinary trees. 

 Its roots spread in a similar manner beneath the soil. When 

 laid bare by a torrent that has washed away the earth, they 

 have been traced to a distance of more than a hundred feet 

 without reaching their extremity. The history of these Bao- 

 babs, possibly of the very trees which Adanson's account has 

 rendered famous, reaches back to the discovery of that part 

 of the African coast, and of the Cape de Verde Islands, by 

 Cadamosto, in 1455 ; who, in his narrative, mentions the sin- 

 gular disproportion between the height and the girth of these 

 trees. 1 But they were first fully described by the French 

 naturalist Adanson, who examined them about a century ago. 

 The largest trunks that Adanson measured were eighty-five 

 feet in circumference, or twenty-seven in diameter. Golberry 

 is said to have measured one that was over a hundred feet in 

 girth. Quite recently, M. Perrottet has met with many Bao- 

 babs in Senegambia, varying from sixty to ninety feet in cir- 

 cumference, yet still in a green old age, and showing no signs 

 of decrepitude. There can be no doubt, therefore, respecting 

 the prodigious size which these trees attain ; and there is 

 great reason to believe that they are among the oldest deni- 

 zens of our planet. Indeed, their age is plausibly estimated 

 at five or six thousand years. And the younger De Candolle 

 has placed so much confidence in this estimate that he has 

 employed it as a standard of comparison in the case of the 

 Mexican Cypresses which we have just considered. If the 

 evidence were really as direct as is generally thought, we could 

 interpose no serious objection to such a conclusion. But a 

 critical examination proves that the whole account given by 

 recent writers, upon Adanson's authority, is strangely at 

 variance with his own statements. 



The current narrative is substantially and briefly as fol- 

 lows: — that Adanson observed, at the Madelaine Islands, 

 near Cape de Verde, some Baobab-trees of thirty feet in 



i " Arbores vero ibi sunt tantse magnitudinis, ut earum ambitus sit 

 pedum xvii, licet eminentia altitudinis non quadret magnitudini ; non 

 enim altius tolluntur quam pedes xx," etc. (A. Cadamusti, Navig., c. 

 xliii., in Grynseus, Nov. Orb., p. 45.) 



