6-2 
DRAGON-TREE OF OROTAVA. 
pomegranate, and date trees. We were assured, that these 
last were as little productive here as on the coast of Cumana. 
Although we had been made acquainted, from the narra- 
tives of many travellers, with the dragon-tree of the garden 
of M. Eranqui, we were not the less struck with its enor- 
mous magnitude. We were told, that the trunk of this 
tree, which is mentioned in several very ancient documents 
as marking the boundaries of a field, was as gigantic in the 
fifteenth century as it is at the present time. Its height 
appeared to us to be about 50 or 00 feet ; its circumference 
near the roots is 45 feet. Wo could not measure higher, 
but Sir George Staunton found that, 10 feet from the 
ground, the diameter of the trunk is still 12 English feel ; 
which corresponds perfectly with the statement of Borda, 
who found its mean circumference 33 feet 3 inches, French 
measure. The trunk 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 yucca which adorns 
the valley of Mexico. This division gives it a very different 
appearance from that of the palm-tree. 
Among organic creations, this tree is undoubtedly, to- 
gether with the Adansonia or baobab of Senegal, one of the 
oldest inhabitants of our globe. The baobabs are of still 
greater dimensions than the dragon-tree of Orotava. There 
are some which near the root measure 34 feet in diameter, 
though their total height is only from 50 to 60 feet. But 
we should observe, that the Adansonia, like the ochroma, 
and all the plants of the family of bombas, grow much more 
rapidly* than the draccena, the vegetation of winch is very 
slow. That in M. Eranqui’ s garden still bears every year 
* It is the same with the plane-tree (Platanus occidentalis) which 
M. Micfaaux measured at Marietta, on the banks of the Ohio, and which, 
3t twenty feet from the ground, was 1 :W feet in diameter. — “Voyage 
a l’Oucst dcs Monts Alleghany,” 1804, p. 93. The yew, chesnut, cak, 
plane-tree, deciduous cypress, bombas, mimosa, ctesalpinia, hymensea, 
and dracaena, appear to me to be the plants which, in different climates, 
present specimens of the most extraordinary growth. An oak, discovered 
together with some Gallic helmets in 1809, in the turf pits of the depart- 
ment of the Somme, near the village of Yscu.t, seven leagues from Abbe- 
ville, was about the same size as the dragon-tree of Orotava. According 
to a memoir by M. Traullee, the trunk of this oak was 14 feet in 
diameter. 
