THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 541 



being able to see either the beginning or the end, Pliny 

 maintained that they grow for ever: Vites sine fine crescunt, 

 said the Koman naturalist. 



Bnt we have more precise data as to the size of 

 sundry other plants. Thus in the virgin forests of India, 

 the Calamus Rotang, which climbs upon the trunks of 

 aged trees, and stretches from one to another, sinking to 

 the ground to rise again, attains, according to the trav- 

 eller Loureiro, a length of 400 or 500 feet. 



The Gigantic Fucus {Fiicas giganteus, Linn.) reaches 

 much more extraordinary proj^jortions ; the waves of the 

 ocean, according to Humboldt, yield strips which are 

 sometimes 1500 to 1600 feet long. 



In an interesting article in the Revue Germanique, 

 ]M. A. Boscowitz says, that in the botanical garden of 

 Claracas there was a Convolvulus which in six months 

 attained the incredible length of 6000 feet. 



It must therefore have grown at the rate of more than 

 a foot per hour, and its groAvth must have been visible to 

 the naked eye! 



CHAPTER IIL 



VEGETABLE LONGEVITY. 



But if anything ought to astonish us in the life of trees 

 it is their longevity; we might even go farther, and speak 

 of the principle of eternity which is clearly latent in some 

 species, the death of Avhich seems rather to depend upon 

 fortuitous circumstances than on the fact of age. 



