ASCERTAINED LONGEVITY OP BACES. 477 



Rowing in California, "were born in the days when Mahomet 

 was in full career. 



It is true that plants do in reality perish commonly without 

 attaining any such longevity; and that constitutional feeble- 

 ness is notoriously one of the accompaniments of advancing 

 age. But this arises from external, not intriusic, causes. The 

 soil which surrounds them is exhausted, their roots wander 

 iato uncongenial land, water in unnatural excess is introduced, 

 the food they require is withheld, violence rends them, men 

 mutilate them, severe cold disorganizes them, and these and 

 other causes produce disease, which may end in death. But 

 this is very different from dying of mere old age; and for 

 practical purposes it is material to draw the distinction. 



If no evidence exist to show that wild plants suffer from 

 mere old age, we cannot admit such a property to be incident 

 to those which are cultivated. 



Nevertheless, what are called facts, have been adduced to 

 prove that if plants do not die of old age in a wild state, yet 

 that they incontestably do wear out when artificially multiplied 

 by division. In opposition to this it would seem to be suffici- 

 ent to quote the White Beurr6 Pears of France, which French 

 writers assure us have been thus propagated from time imme- 

 morial, and which exhibit no trace of debility; or the 

 Jerusalem Artichoke already named ; or the cultivated Vines 

 of which the very va,rieties known to the Eomans have been 

 transmitted by perpetual division, and without deterioration or 

 decrepitude, to our own day. The Vitis pracox oi Columella is 

 admitted by Dr. Henderson, on the authority of the most 

 trustworthy writers, to have been the Maurillon or JEarly 

 Black July Grape of the present day ; the nomentana to have 

 been the German trammer ; the grcecula the modern Cprinth 

 or Currant ; and the dactyli our Cornichons or Finger Grapes. 

 The oldest known variety of Pear is the autumn Bergamot— 

 believed by Pomologists to be identically the same fruit culti- 

 vated by the Eomans in the time of Julius Cffisar,— that is to 

 say, the variety is nearly two thousand years old. 



Still it is afBrmed that some cultivated plants have really 

 worn out. The Eedstreak, the Golden Pippin, and the Golden 



