92 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



it is called Mulapa, i. e. Nlapa-tree, more properly Muti- 

 nlapa) as far as Lourenzo Marques, almost to 26 of S. lat. 

 Although Cadamosto said in the 1 5th century " eminentia 

 non quadrat magnitudini," and although Golberry (Frag- 

 mens d'un Yoyage en Afrique, T. ii. p. 92) found in the 

 " Yallee des deux Gagnacks" trunks which, with 36 English 

 feet diameter near the roots, were only 64 English feet high, 

 yet this great disproportion between height and thickness 

 must not be regarded as general. The learned traveller 

 Peters remarks that ' ' very old trees lose height by the gra- 

 dual decay of the top, while they continue to increase in 

 girth. On the East Coast of Africa one sees not unfre- 

 quently trunks of little more than ten feet diameter reach a 

 height of 69 English feet/' 



If, according to what has been said, the bold estimations 

 of Adanson and Perottet assign to the Adansonias measured 

 by them an age of from 5150 to 6000 years, which would 

 make them contemporaneous with the epoch of the building 

 of the Pyramids or even with that of Menes, a period when 

 the constellation of the -Southern Cross was still visible in 

 Northern Germany (Kosmos, Bd. iii. S. 402 and 487; 

 Eng. ed. p. 293, and note 146), on the other hand, the 

 more secure estimations made from the annual rings of trees 

 in our northern temperate zone, and from the ratio which 

 has been found to subsist between the thickness of the 

 layer of wood and the time of growth, give us shorter pe- 

 riods. Decandolle finds as the result of his inquiries, that 

 of all European species of trees the yew is that which attains 

 the greatest age. He assigns to the yew (Taxus baccata) of 



