252 
PRUNING AND THINNING. 
[Part IV. 
diameter must be doubled to make a whole dia¬ 
meter ; but when you count the years of a 
tree you must not double them to get at its age. 
“ There’s ne’er a villain in all Denmark but he’s 
an arrant rogue.” These three truisms seem 
equally profound and equally palpable. Yet I 
think that Adanson may have made the slip, 
and, with the tree standing, may have failed to 
perceive that the number of rings on the half 
diameter is the same as on the whole diameter; 
and that, having doubled their width in complet¬ 
ing the space or diameter, he has also doubled 
their number in reckoning the time or the age of 
the tree. If so, the number of years he has 
given must be halved , and 2575 years would be 
the age of the tree; a pretty good age too, 
since it would nearly take us back to the time 
of Romulus! Even for this age, however, the 
growth must have been slow ; little more than 
the fifteenth part of an inch for the width of 
each annual ring. If the annual ring were one- 
eighth of an inch in width, the tree would attain 
the size of thirty feet in diameter in 1440 years; 
if the ring were one-fourth of an inch in width, 
in 720 years. 
I think that the baobab should be “ restored 
to its place in universal history,” because the 
