THE LONGEVITY OF TREES. 123 



We close our enumeration, already too protracted, with a 

 case of longevity, perhaps transcending that of the oldest 

 Baobabs, or of the Mexican Cypresses ; namely, the famous 

 Dragon-tree (Draccena Draco) of the city of Orotava, in 

 Teneriffe. This tree has been visited by many competent 

 observers ; and among others, by that prince of scientific 

 travelers, the veteran Humboldt, who has given a good figure; 

 of it, as it appeared about seventy years ago, from a drawing 

 made by M. Ozonne in 1776. A later and much fuller ac- 

 count was published about twenty years since, by M. Bert he- 

 lot, 1 who has assiduously devoted many years to the study of 

 the civil and natural history of the Canary Islands ; and a 

 fine figure of the mutilated trunk, as it appeared after the 

 terrible storm of the 21st of July, 1819, forms one of the 

 most striking pictorial illustrations of that elaborate and ex- 

 cellent work, the " Histoire Naturelle des lies Canaries," by 

 P. Barker Webb, Esq., and M. Berthelot. 



The trunk is by no means equal in size to some of the trees 

 already noticed. It is only fifty feet in girth at the base, and 

 not more than sixty or seventy in elevation. But, at the dis- 

 covery of Teneriffe in 1402, nearly four and a half centuries 

 ago, this Dragon-tree was nearly as large as at the present 

 day, and had been immemorially an object of veneration 

 among the Guanches. After the conquest, at the close of the 

 fifteenth century, the trunk was employed as a boundary in 

 dividing the lands, and as such is mentioned in ancient docu- 

 ments. It had changed very little since that period, except 

 that the centre had been hollowed by slow decay, until the 

 summer of 1819, when a third of its spreading top was carried 

 away by a tempest. But it still continues to vegetate ; and 

 its remaining branches are still annually crowned, — as they 

 have been each returning autumn, perhaps for hundreds of 

 centuries, with its beautiful clusters of white, lily-like blos- 

 soms, — emblems of "the eternal youth of nature." 



The Dragon-tree, like its allies the Palms, and unlike 

 ordinary trees, does not increase in diameter by annual con- 

 centric layers. The usual means of investigation are here of 

 1 In " Nova Acta Acad. Nat. Cur.," xiii., 1827, p. 781. 



