ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 87 



ance in the Canaries contradict the opinion of those who 

 regard the Guanches as having been an isolated Atlantic 

 nation without intercourse with African or Asiatic nations. 

 The form of the Dracaenas is repeated at the southern extre- 

 mity of Africa, in the Isle of Bourbon, and in New Zealand. 

 [n all these distant regions species of the genus in question 

 are found, but none have been met with in the New Continent, 

 where its form is replaced by that of the Yucca. Dracaena 

 borealis of Aiton is a true Convallaria, and has all the 

 "habitus" of that genus. (Humboldt, Ed. hist. T. i. p. 118 

 and 639.) I have given a representation of the dragon-tree 

 of Orotava, taken from a drawing made by E. d'Ozonne in 

 1776, in the last plate of the Picturesque Atlas of my 

 American journey. (Yues des Cordilleres et Monumens 

 des Peuples indigenes de TAmerique, PL Ixix.) I found 

 d'Ozonne's drawing among the manuscripts left by the cele- 

 brated Borda, in the still unprinted travelling journal 

 entrusted to me by the Depot de la Marine, and from which I 

 borrowed important astronomically-determined geographical, 

 as well as barometric and trigonometric notices. (Eel. hist. 

 T. i. p. 282.) The measurement of the dragon-tree of the 

 Yilla Pranqui was made on Borda's first voyage with Pingre, 

 in 1771; not in his second voyage, in 1776, with Yarela. 

 It is affirmed that in the early times of the Norman and 

 Spanish Conquests, in the 15th century, Mass was said at a 

 small altar erected in the hollow trunk of the tree. Un- 

 fortunately the dragon-tree of Orotava lost one side of its top 

 in the storm of the 21st of July, 1819. There is a fine and 

 large English copperplate engraving which represents the 

 present state of the tree with remarkable truth to nature. 



