88 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



The monumental character of these colossal living vege- 

 table forms, and the kind of reverence which has been felt 

 for them among all nations, have occasioned in modern 

 times the bestowal of greater care in the numerical determi- 

 nation of their age and the size of their trunks. The re- 

 sults of these inquiries have led the author of the important 

 treatise, " De la longevite des Arbres," the elder Decan- 

 dolle, Endlicher, Unger, and other able botanists, to consider 

 it not improbable that the age of several individual trees 

 which are still alive goes back to the earliest historical 

 periods, if not of Egypt, at least of Greece and Italy. It is 

 said in the Bibliotheque Universelle de- Geneve, 1831, 

 T. Ixvii. p. 50: "Plusieurs exemples semblent confirmer 

 Tidee qu'il existe encore sur le globe des arbres d'une anti- 

 quite prodigieuse, et peut-etre temoins de ses dernieres 

 revolutions physiques. Lorsqu'on regarde un arbre comme 

 un agregat d'autant d'iudividus" souds ensemble qu'il s'est 

 developpe de bourgeons a sa surface, on ne peut pas 

 s'etonner si, de nouveaux bourgeons s'ajoutant sans cesse 

 aux anciens, Fagr6gat qui en re suite n'a point de terme 

 necessaire a son existence." In the same manner Agardh 

 says : " If in trees there are produced in each solar year 

 new parts, so that the older hardened parts are replaced by 

 new ones capable of conducting sap, we see herein a type 

 of growth limited only by external causes." He ascribes 

 the shortness of the life of herbs, or of such plants as are 

 not trees, "to the preponderance of the production of 

 flowers and fruit over the formation of leaves." Unfruitful- 

 ness is to a plant a prolongation of life. Endlicher cites 

 the example of a plant of Medicago sativa, var. versicolor, 



