THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 99 



that it should furnish instances of extraordinary longevity. 

 In comparative youth, the stem increases in diameter only at 

 the rate of an eighth of an inch in a year. Therefore the 

 Olive at Pescio, mentioned by De Candolle, having a trunk 

 of twenty-four feet in girth, should be seven hundred years 

 old ; even supposing it to have grown, throughout, at the 

 ordinary rate for younger trees ; while the still larger tree at 

 Beaulieu, near Nice, described by Risso, and recently meas- 

 ured by Berthelot, doubtless the oldest of the race in Europe, 

 should be more than a thousand years old. Although now in 

 a state of decrepitude, it still bears an abundant crop of fruit, 

 or at least did so, as late as the year 1828. 1 It is not im- 

 probable, therefore, that those eight venerable trees, which 

 yet survive upon the Mount of Olives, may have been in 

 existence, as tradition asserts, at the time of our Saviour's 

 passion. 



Let us now direct our attention to the class of coniferous 

 trees, among which, on account of the resinous matters that 

 commonly pervade their wood and tend to preserve it from 

 decay, as well as for other reasons which we will not stop to 

 explain, instances of longevity may be expected to occur not 

 inferior to those already noticed. 



We begin with the classical cypress ( Cupressus semper- 

 virens), so celebrated in all antiquity for the incorruptibility 

 of its wood and its funeral uses ; doubtless, one of the longest 

 lived trees of southern Europe and of the East. Hunter, 

 in his edition of Evelyn, about a century ago, mentions the 

 fine avenue of Cypresses " Los Cupressos de la Reyna Sul- 

 tana," which adorns the garden of the Generaliffe at Gra- 

 nada. Under their shade, according to the well-known legend, 

 the last Moorish king of Granada surprised his wife with one 

 of the Abencerrages, which led to the massacre of thirty-six 

 princes of that race. This was, of course, before the year 

 1492, the date of the final expulsion of the Moors. These 

 enduring memorials of frailty and revenge were still flourish- 

 ing in perennial vigor in 1831, when they were examined by 



1 Risso, "Hist. Nat. Europ. Merid.," ex Moquin-Tandon, "Teratol. 

 Veg.," p. 105. 



