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an asparagus stalk of eminent slowness in growth, which 
has gained for it the credit of being the oldest tree in the 
world.” 
When the Dragon-tree is young, the simple stems are 
smooth, or marked only by shallow transverse indentations 
of foot stalks of past leaves. The compound stems are 
deeply corrugated longitudinally, and the trunk has an 
evident tendency to divide continually as it descends. 
When once a stem has branched its life seems to have de- 
parted, being replaced by the lives of the several young 
trees of its kind left growing on its summit, and whose 
roots, entering the bark and encasing the old stem on every 
side, conceal its slow withering corpse from the light of day. 
Ages pass by, the young trees flourishing, die in their turn, 
each producing two or more new trees mounted on their 
summits, and thus presenting such a surface to the wind, 
that the hollow base of the original tree would never be able, 
unless artificially assisted, to support the strain, and hence 
the true explanation of the hollow interior of the trunk 
from the remotest times in the past to the fatal autumnal 
day in 1867, when the great gale snapped asunder, for ever, 
the cords of life of one of the world’s oldest inhabitants. 
Mr. It. D. Darbishire, B.A., F.G.S., exhibited a fine series 
of Ceylonese land and fresh-water shells, procured through 
the instrumentality of Mr. M. M. Hartog, F.L.S. 
The Helices were mostly of the Acavus section, which in 
Ceylon reaches its highest development. Conspicuous 
among these are the rare H. superba (Pfr.), H. Grevillei 
(Pfr.), H. Phoenix (Pfr.), and the curious little H. Skinnerei 
(Pfr.). The common H. hsemastoma (L.) was also abun- 
dantly represented in many beautiful varieties, and the 
curious Helix Rivolei (Pfr.) of the subgenus Polygyra was 
also worthy of comment. 
