Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/100

 *[Footnote: it is called Mulapa, i. e. Nlapa-tree, more properly Mutinlapa) as far as Lourenzo Marques, almost to 26° of S. lat. Although Cadamosto said in the 15th century "eminentia non quadrat magnitudini," and although Golberry (Fragmens d'un Voyage en Afrique, T. ii. p. 92) found in the "Vallée des deux Gagnacks" trunks which, with 36 English feet diameter near the roots, were only 64 English feet high, yet this great disproportion between height and thickness must not be regarded as general. The learned traveller Peters remarks that "very old trees lose height by the gradual decay of the top, while they continue to increase in girth. On the East Coast of Africa one sees not unfrequently trunks of little more than ten feet diameter reach a height of 69 English feet."

If, according to what has been said, the bold estimations of Adanson and Perottet assign to the Adansonias measured by them an age of from 5150 to 6000 years, which would make them contemporaneous with the epoch of the building of the Pyramids or even with that of Menes, a period when the constellation of the Southern Cross was still visible in Northern Germany (Kosmos, Bd. iii. S. 402 and 487; Eng. ed. p. 293, and note 146), on the other hand, the more secure estimations made from the annual rings of trees in our northern temperate zone, and from the ratio which has been found to subsist between the thickness of the layer of wood and the time of growth, give us shorter periods. Decandolle finds as the result of his inquiries, that of all European species of trees the yew is that which attains the greatest age. He assigns to the yew (Taxus baccata) of]*