shaped variety, also red and yellow. These are eaten and relished by many from the hand. The red are best for cooking-the yellow for slicing like cucumbers, seasoned with pepper, salt and vinegar, and eaten raw. The seed should be sown in the early part of March, in a slight hot bed, and the plants set out in the open ground early in May. In private grounds it will be necessary to plant them near a fence, or to provide trellises for them to be trained to, in the same manner as for nasturtians; they will, however, do very well if planted out four feet distant from each other every way. But a nice way to keep the plant erect, and the fruit from the ground is to drive down four stakes, so as to make a square, say two feet each way, around the stakes. These will keep the vines from falling, and expose the fruit nicely to the sun for ripening. They will bear till frost.-Journal of Agriculture. ANTIQUITY OF TREES. An interesting item from the justly celebrated Lindley, his Vegetable Kingdom.London, 1846. "THE distinguished botanist Martins states that in Brazil are found a kind of locust trees, which fifteen Indians with outstretched arms could just embrace at the bottom-they measured eighty-four feet in circumference, and sixty feet where their boles (bodies) became cylindrical. 66 By counting the concentric rings-Martins arrived at the conclusion that they were of the Age of Homer, and three hundred and thirty-two years old in the days of Pythagoras. Another was counted, and carried up to four thousand one hundred and four years, far beyond the time of our Saviour." When we reflect upon the brevity of animal and vegetable life-in the presence of such a tree, how can we fail to behold such a life as it had without feelings of awe! What causes such a difference in behalf of this tree? For after all it is true living-it drinks the dews and the rains-moves in all the breezes and storms, breathes the air and feels the electric spark-and has done so since the earth was young! Forty times the age of the most venerable of the race-four or five times older than Methuselah! As old as some of our phenomenic changes-beginning where a different phenomena of vegetation had recently ceased.-Judge Meigs. In connexion with the interesting fact stated on the preceding page, for which we are indebted to the Recording Secretary of the American Institute, we add some further instances, which seem to be well established, and are truly astonishing. We may remark, that within a few years, both in America and France, the age and size of trees have been discussed in a very philosophical manner; especially by M. Decandolle, a great botanist who investigated fully the physiology of plants, and published an elaborate and profound paper entitled "the Antiquity of Trees.' "A certain Baobab tree of Africa is considered by Humboldt as the oldest organic monument of our planet; and Adanson, a distinguished botanist, by ingenious calculations, has ascertained its age to be 5150 years. The method adopted by Adanson for finding its age, was by making a deep cut in the side of the trunk, and counting the concentric rings, by which he ascertained how much the tree had grown, in three centuries; and having already learned the growth of young trees, he established his general law through the average growth. The enormous dimensions of the trunk of this tree bear a striking disproportion to the other parts. Examples of the species have been seen, which, with a trunk ninety feet in circumference, were only twelve feet in height. A still larger one was seen by Mr. Golberry in the valley of the two Gagnacks in Africa; it was thirty-four feet in diameter. The flower is of the same gigantic proportions as the tree. Such colossal masses of timber might be hollowed out into by no means straitened dwelling-houses. "One of the most celebrated trees described by travellers of recent times, is the Great Dragon tree of the island of Teneriffe. It derives its name of dragon's blood, by which it is popularly known, from the circumstance of a liquor of a deep red colour like blood flowing from its hoary trunk during the dog-days. This exudation soon becomes dry and brittle by the action of the atmosphere, and is the true dragon's-blood of the apothecaries, and other venders. The wonderful size and appearance of this tree excited the admiration of Humboldt, who thus describes it: -"We were told that the trunk of this tree, which is mentioned in some very ancient documents as marking the boundaries of a field, was as gigantic in the fifteenth century as it is at the present moment. Its height appeared to us to be about fifty or sixty feet; its circumference near the root is forty-five feet. 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. It still bears every year, both leaves and fruit. Its aspect feelingly recalls to mind that eternal youth of nature' which is an inexhaustible source of motion and of life." This giant plant was laid prostrate by a tempest in 1822. "The fact here noticed by the learned traveller, that the tree annu 1 ally bore leaves and fruit, affords indubitable proof of a very remarkable circumstance connected with the vegetable kingdom. In man and all other animals, we find an organization and a process of life going on which is destined to cease at a certain period. Mortality is written in irrevocable characters on every thing which treads the earth, or wings the air, or cleaves the flood. Life in these, is like sand in the hour-glass; its very motion, so to speak, involves the necessity of its becoming exhausted at last, and ceasing to move. But it is otherwise with trees. They appear to possess the power of growing on for ever without exhibiting any symptoms of decay, unless from accidental or extraneous causes. "Cypresses of gigantic dimensions are met with in Mexico. At Atlexo there is one seventy-six feet in girth; and another at St. Maria del Tuli, in the province of Oaxaca, which is one hundred and eighteen feet in circumference! This is larger than the dragon tree of the Canaries, and all the baobabs of Africa. But,' says Humboldt, 'on examining it narrowly, M. Anza observes, that what excites the admiration of travellers is not a single individual, but that three united trunks form the famous Sabino of Santa Maria del Tuli.' The fact of the threefold nature of the stem, seems to have escaped the notice of some writers; it is of importance in determining which is really the largest organic monument of our planet. There is another cypress at Chapultepec in the same region, which is said to be one hundred and seventeen feet ten inches round, and the younger Decandolle considers it even older than the baobab of Adanson. "One of the most curious and beautiful of nature's productions, is the Banian or Burr tree, the Ficus Indica of botanists. Each tree forms in itself a grove, composed of numerous stems connected together, some of which are of the size of a large tree. On the island of Nerbuddah, near Baroach, in Hindostan, there is still standing a celebrated banian called the Cubbeer Burr. The tradition of the natives is, that it is three thousand years old. It is supposed by some to be the same tree that was visited by Nearchus, one of Alexander the Great's officers. The large trunks of this tree amount in number to 350, the smaller ones exceed 3000, and each of these is constantly sending forth branches and hanging roots to form other trunks. The circumference of this remarkable plant is nearly 2000 feet. Milton, in his "Paradise Lost," has described one of these trees as that of whose leaves our first parents 'made themselves aprons' after the fall. Soon they chose The fig tree, not that kind for fruit renowned, Branching so broad and long, that in the ground High over-arched, and echoing walks between.' The following remarks are very apposite to the subject:— "Trees have figured in literature, and struck their roots deep in the poetry of all ages. Although a taste for the picturesque does not characterize the ancients, and there is little description of natural scenery in their prose works, yet we find exceptions in regard to trees. One remarkable instance will promptly occur to all classical scholars: it is the famous platanus, in the shade of which Socrates kept his place while he discoursed, constantly moving from the sun; it is mentioned both by Plato and Cicero. The choral allusions to groves, in Greek Tragedy, are also familiar. The Latin word lucus, carried religious associations which belonged to no other term, and was shadowy with such imaginations as hover over Virgil's line, Et caligantem nigra formidine lucum. "These superstitions were founded on natural sentiment; as he may understand who will recall some twilight hour, when he found himself musing and gazing into the recesses of a dark ancient tree till overtaken by night. The poet is one who can unfold the Herculanean papyrus of such thoughts, and decipher the hieroglyphic of imagination, and translate the vagueness of these inklings into the idiom of common life. Perhaps it has never been more completely done than by Wordsworth, in the YEW TREES: 'A pillar'd shade, Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked May meet at noontide-Fear and trembling Hope, "I wish attention were more frequently drawn, by parents and other educators, to the individuality of great trees, which have each their physiognomy, as much as so many men. And could we read the character, in these lineaments of trunk and boughs and 'shadowing shroud,' we should read the impressions of spring tides, of droughts, and of tempests. An old tree is an old friend, and we do well to take pains that our sons may hereafter love its very wrinkles. The tree of the park, and the tree of the forest, are as different as the old knotty, gnarled, unmovable baron, and the alert, smooth, thriving, average dweller in cities. The same reasons operate in both cases. Character becomes more inspissated, juicy, full of tannin and fibrin, where there has been elbow-room for the mighty branches to wrestle with the winds. Look at an 'old field' of the South, in which a thousand young pines have sprung up spontaneously, side by side, and you are instantly reminded of a boarding-school of sweet young ladies; the same name would do for all. On the other hand, I do know a solitary tree, fit for Druids, and predominating over a waste meadow, which is so reverend in its eloquence that it preaches a sermon to me whenever I pass or contemplate it. Those mossed trees, that have outlived the eagles,' should covenant with us to leave something of their kind for our descendants." } POETRY. THE world is full of Poetry-the air And sparkle in its brightness. Earth is veil'd The year leads round the seasons, in a choir "Tis not the chime and flow of words, that move 'Tis not the union of returning sounds, VOL. III.-SEPT., 1849. 15 |