it is at the present time. Its height appeared to be 50 or 60 
feet, its circumference, near the root, 45 feet, but Sir G. 
Staunton, who was at Orotava in October, 1792, found that 
at ten feet from the ground the girth of the trunk was 36 
feet, which corresponds perfectly with the statement of 
Borda in 1600.” 
“The trunk (says Humboldt) is divided into a great 
number of branches which rise in the form of a candelabrum, 
and are terminated by tufts of leaves like the Agucca. The 
tree still bears flowers and fruit every year. The Dracaena 
presents a curious phenomenon with respect to the migration 
of plants. It has never been found in a wild state in Africa ; 
the East Indies is its real country. How has it been trans- 
planted to Teneriffe ? Does its existence prove that at some 
distant period the Guanches had connexions with other 
nations originally from Asia ? ” 
Humboldt gives an engraving of the famous Dragon-tree 
in his “Atlas Pittoresque,” but it appears that it was supplied 
from a drawing sent him by M. March ais, and that from an 
earlier sketch by M. Ozone, and the result, as Piazzi Smyth 
puts it, “ was a gradual growth of error and convention- 
ality, as man copies from man,” and there does not exist 
in any of the popular botanical works a truthful drawing of 
this extraordinary floral form, which belongs to the natural 
order Liliacese. 
The course of the history of this Dragon-tree since the 
time of Humboldt’s visit, as far as I can trace it through the 
works of travellers, appears to consist of records of its 
successive mutilations from frequent destructive storms and 
the carrying away of pieces by visitors from every land. 
In 1819 a great gale wrenched off a large arm; in 1829 a 
deluge of rain fell upon the Peak and sweeping down through 
Orotava, carried off nearly one half of the old hollow trunk, 
and C. Piazzi Smyth records “ that certain Goths hacked an 
immense piece out of the thin wall of the hollow trunk for 
