122 ESSAYS. 



below the truth. As to its rate of growth when young, he 

 states that the tree acquires the diameter of an inch or an 

 inch and a half in the first year ; the diameter of a foot in ten 

 years, and about a foot and a half in thirty years ; but so far 

 from having extended these data, and employed them in the 

 manner which is attributed to him, he says, that, although it 

 might be desirable thus to employ them, a sound geometry 

 teaches that they are quite insufficient for the purpose. 

 Hence, instead of attempting any precise determination, he 

 merely offers the probable conjecture, that these largest 

 Baobabs may have been in existence several thousand years, 

 or nearly -from the period of the universal deluge ; which 

 would give them a claim to be considered the most ancient 

 living monuments in the world. 1 



We cannot learn that Adanson ever made any further 

 statements upon the subject ; and, as he never revisited the 

 African coast, he cannot have collected additional facts. His 

 original writings plainly show that he never pretended to 

 have obtained the data and made the estimates which have 

 so lonq; been attributed to him. To whom belongs the credit 

 of falsifying his testimony we are unable to ascertain, as the 

 authors above mentioned do not cite their immediate author- 

 ity ; — perhaps to one M. Duchesne, whose name the elder 

 De Candolle has casually alluded to, as having drawn up a 

 table, exhibiting the diameter of the Baobab at different 

 periods, doubtless upon the very plan that Adanson pointed 

 out and condemned. We are only surprised that such accu- 

 rate and judicious writers as the De Candolles, father and 

 son, should have relied upon second-hand authorities in any 

 case where the originals were accessible, and especially in 

 what they term " the most celebrated case of extreme longevity 

 that has yet been observed with precision.'* 2 



1 "Mem. Acad. Sciences," 1761, p. 231 ; and "Encycl. Suppl.," vol. 

 i. p. 798. 



2 A passage which has met our eye in Mirbel's " Ele'mens de Physiolo- 

 gic Ve'ge'tale," i. p. 116, shows that no such data as those which have 

 been, as we suppose, falsely assumed, were known to that author down 

 to the year 1815. 



