Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/208

 184 AGE while a few species of the larger growth of trees live centuries, and even tens of centuries. The oriental plane, the baobab, the chestnut tree, the great sequoia of California, and the deciduous cypress are said to furnish individual specimens, the age of which attains to several thousand years ; as much, in fact, as 4,000 or 5,000 years or more. Yew trees are reported to flourish in certain cases after a life of 1,500 or 2,000 years. Adanson found trees of the baobab species in Africa which he computed to be 5,150 years of age; and the younger De Candolle reports the deciduous cypress of Cha- pultepec, in Mexico, to be still older. The baobab of Senegal, measuring 90 feet in girth, and the gigantic draccena draco at Orotava in Tenerift'e, which Humboldt classes with the baobab, are supposed to be among the oldest inhabitants of the earth. The famous sweet chestnut trees on Mount Etna, one of which measures 160 feet in circumference, another 70, and another 64, are said to be as old as the baobabs just mentioned ; and the oriental plane tree in the valley of Buyukdere, near Constan- tinople, having a 'girth of 150 feet and an in- ternal cavity 80 feet in circumference, is deemed as old as any other tree existing. The great sequoia gigantea of the Mariposa and Calave- ras groves of California, measuring 90 feet in circumference, and attaining a height of over 800 feet, without doubt lives over 2,000 years. Eight olive trees are still to be seen on the mount of Olives, at Jerusalem, which historical documents prove to have existed before the Sejjuk Turks took possession of that city, 800 years ago ; and the yew trees at Fountain abbey, in Yorkshire, were reported to be old when the abbey was erected, in 1132. They are probably more than 1,000 years of age now ; and the old yew tree formerly in Foth- eringhill churchyard in Perthshire, and meas- uring 56 feet in circumference, was believed to have existed more than 20 centuries. At Ankerwyke house, near Staines, is a celebrated yew tree, older than the meeting of the English barons at Runnymede, in June, 1215, the date of Magna Charta; and many other cases of extreme antiquity are well authenticated with regard to the trees of the yew species. The trunk of the Ankerwyke house yew tree meas- ures 9 feet 3 inches hi diameter at 3 feet from the ground, and its branches overshadow an area of 207 feet in circumference. Many oaks have been cut down in the New Forest which presented as many as 300 or 400 concentric rings, each of which denotes a year's growth ; and oaks exist much larger in dimensions and of greater age, some exceeding probably 1,200 years. Dr. Plott mentions an oak felled at Norbury which measured 45 feet in circum- ference. The Broddington oak, in the vale of Gloucester, was 54 feet in girth, and Damory's oak hi Dorsetshire 68 feet. The age of the lat- ter was computed to be about 2,000 years. "Wallace's oak at Ellersley, near Paisley, in Scotland, is believed to be more $han 700 years of age, and is still flourishing. At Trons, in the Grisons, a lime tree measuring 51 feet in girth, planted hi 1284, was still existing in 1792, and was therefore known to be nearly 508 years of age; and in 1776 some famous cypresses called cupresos de la sultana, in the palace garden of Granada, were reputed to be 800 or 900 years old. An elm tree planted by Henry IV. was standing in the garden of the Luxembourg pal- ace, in Paris, at the commencement of the French revolution, 1789 ; and others are known to be of more than a century's growth ; but it is not well ascertained that they sometimes, as af- firmed, attain to the age of 300 years. Bacon's elms, in Gray's Inn walk, London, planted in 1600, decayed prematurely in 1720; and the elms of the long walk at Windsor, planted early in the last century, though still fine trees, are evidently past their prime. The way in which the age of some of these trees has been com- puted is twofold : first, by comparison with other very old trees, the rate of growth of which was known ; and secondly, by cutting out a portion of the trunk from the circum- ference to the centre, and counting the number of concentric rings that are visible. In exoge- nous trees, the woody cylinder of one year's growth is divided from the succeeding and pre- ceding by a denser substance, which marks dis- tinctly the lines of separation between each year. The first of these methods is sufficiently trustworthy to give an approximation to the truth, and the second would be still better if care were taken to avoid all cause of error ; but Dr. Lindley states in his "Introduction to Botany," that, owing to the extreme inequality of thickness in the annual layers of wood on opposite sides of a stem or trunk, an exami- nation made on the stunted or less developed side only might lead to a miscalculation of the age; the error thus induced being in some cases as much as 60 per cent, or more. There is no good reason to suppose, however, that such mistakes are common, or that the ages of celebrated specimens, authenticated as above, have been obtained by such miscalculations. The palm trees, and some tropical tribes of en- dogenous plants, are said to attain to an age of 100 or 200 years, and it has been supposed that certain Brazilian cocoanut palms may be as much as 600 or 700 years old ; but the method of computing their age is hardly to be relied on. This consists in counting the number of rings externally visible upon their rind, be- tween the base and the summit of the stem, or by comparing the oldest specimens, the age of which is unknown, with young trees, of a known age and like species ; but no confidence can be placed hi such a method. The date palm, which is best known to Europeans, does not attain to a very great age. The Arabs do not assign to it a longevity exceeding two or three centuries. The mode of growth seems to preclude even the possibility of attaining to a great age, compared with the exogenous class. (See ENDOGENS, and EXOGENS.)