402 
THE aEOLOaiST. 
There appefir to be, as far as we are aware, no published sections 
of their structure, nor any particularly valuable descriptions for the 
geologist. Some monographs do exist of somewhat ancient date, 
namely, Crantz, ' De Duabus Draconis Arboribus Botanicorum,' 4to, 
Vienna, 1768 ; Berens, ' De Dracone Arbore Clusii,' 4to, Gottingen, 
1770; Vandelli, 'De Arbore Draconis seu Dracsena,' Svo, Olisipone, 
1768 ; and Thunberg, ' Dissertatio de Dracaena,' 4to, Upsala, 1808. 
These are all the special works which have come under our direct 
notice. Various accounts, however, are scattered through various 
books of travel and of expeditions; and especially any one who wishes 
to work out the subject will find accounts and admirable photographs 
of the great dragon-tree of Orotnva, and many others, in Professor C. 
Piazzi Smyth's 'Teneriffe.' This Orotava-tree is reputed to be 
6000 years of age. 
" Poor old tree, whose trunk was hollow when Alonzo del Lugo and his 
conquistadores in 1493 established the Spanish authority here, and turned 
the bark into a chapel for holy mass after it had served Druidical pur- 
poses amonsjst the Guanche tribes for ages. Hovr frail is it now ! A storm 
wrenched off an arm ; and more recently certain Goths hacked an immense 
piece out of the thin wall of hollow trunk for the Museum of Botany at 
Kew. . . . Sixty feet higli above the ground at its southern fork ; forty- 
eight feet and a half in circumference at that level, 35 '6 at 6 feet above, 
and 23"8 at 14"5 feet above, or the place where the branches spring out 
from the rapidly narrowing conical trunk — this Dracaena cannot compare 
with the real monarchs of the forest for size. And we must remember that 
it is no proper tree with woody substance ; it is merely a vegetable ; an aspa- 
ragus stalk, with a remarkable power of vitality and an equally eminent 
slowness of growth : it is this last, indeed, not its size, which has gained 
it the credit of being the oldest tree in the world. Let us take note of 
the chief characteristics. First, the immense uprearing of long, naked, 
root-like branches, and the pyramidal outline of the trunk. The leafage 
makes no ver}^ sensible appearance ; there is the typical tuft at the end of 
each branch, or rather stem ; but the miniature palm-trees have been grow- 
ing for ages without bifurcation, extending only in length, nothing in 
breadth. At the point of junction of two or more a thickening of the lower 
branch begins, and occasionally may be seen one or two withered radicles 
hanging loose ; for they have failed to enter the bark, and work their way 
down to the ground. So many of them however have done this, that 
while the simple stems are smooth or marked only by shallow, transverse 
indentations of footstalks of past leaves, the compound stems are deeply 
corrugated lont(itudinally, and the trunk more markedly still, M'ith an evi- 
dent tendency in every wrinkle to divide continually as it descends. When 
once a stem has branched its life seems to have departed, being replaced 
by the lives of the several young trees of its kind left growing on its sum- 
mit, and whose roots, entering the bark, and encasing the stem on every 
side, conceal its slowly withering corpse from the light of day. Ages pass 
by ; the young trees after flourishing die in their turn, each producing 
two or more new ones mounted on their summits ; . . . the inosculating 
roots, which had decorously concealed the death of their parent stem, 
