222 



PRUNING AND THINNING. 



PT. lY. 



dolle think this before Adanson gave us his measure- 

 ments and guesses? I'll be bound tliat he did not. 

 I'll be bound that the first philosopher has taken the 

 second philosopher's calculations for granted ; and, as 

 the cypress exceeds the baobab in measurement, he 

 concludes, naturally, that the cypress also exceeds the 

 baobab in years. If the two philosophers are right, 

 the two trees are slow growers. The measurement 

 given of tlie cypress is 117 feet in girthing. This is 

 about thirty-nine feet in diameter ; and, supposing tlie 

 annual ring to be the twenty- ninth part of an inch in 

 width, which is the rate of growth assigned by 

 Adanson to the baobab, the age of the cypress should 

 be 6,786 years. So that ' the seedling began to vege- 

 tate' nearly a thousand years before the creation of 

 man according to the Hebrew text of the Mosaic 

 writinD;s. If the width of tlie annual rinc^ were one- 

 eiglitli of an inch, the tree would attain the size of 

 thirty-nine feet in diameter in 1872 years. If the 

 width of the annual ring were one-fourth of an inch, 

 the diameter of the tree would have been thirty-nine 

 feet in 936 years ; and the Montezuma cypress would 

 have been about 400 years old at the conquest of 

 Mexico. This is, perhaps, more likely than that it 

 should be a thousand years old in the time of Adam. 

 The growth in girthing of trees in decay — that is, with 

 hollow trunks and pollard heads — is indeed very di- 

 minutive ; and to give them the girthing which they 

 attain to, any number of years may be allowed. So 



