Page 2 Advertisements Column 3

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVIII, Issue 91, 20 April 1914, Page 2

! Experts judging by the gigantic • ; bole of the Santa del Tule cypress,. f and by the slow growth of this species, I have, according to Mr Robert H. .' ; Moulton, whom we quoite, estimated ; the age of the monster to be between | 5000 and 6000 years, i These figures are staggering to the ■ imagination. Taking the lowest computation, when the seed from which the tree sprang fell upon the earjfclr, . King Menes was reigning in Egvnt ' 3000 B.C. When Cheops drwe his i subjects with the lash to the labor of 1 building the Great Pyramid, it was a ; slender stripling of 200 years. Andi I it had reached a lusty youth of 1500 • years when the Hebrews made their, exodus from the land of the Nile. The discovery of America, and the , conquest of Mexico by Cortez would seem, in jts life, things of only a fe\v; months ago. • The last scientific measurement of the Santa Maria del Tule cypress was made by Dr. Yon Schrenk'in 1903, a jcentury after Humboldt discovered! j it, while on. his famous /tour of equatorial America. Dr. Yon Schrenlc found that its trunk, four' feet from the ground, had the astounding girth '■ of 126 feet. Before the broad and towering buH£. of this one life, which has persisted without ir<terruption since the dateof the dawning of history, Dr. Yon' fechrenk, on his first visit, halted in awe. Had the foliaged creature possessed eyes and a tongue, what trea> sures of information could: it haveadded to the annals of man! What revolutions in Mexico ijfc could have related1; what rises and falls Qf monarchies and civilisations in tropical America! . .But flights of fancy gave way to • immediate scientific duties. Author^ ties on trees had declared the discovery ot the approximate age .of this cypress to be one of the most important problems in arboriculture. I hey had expressed a hope that the - next scientist who should visit the ancient living monument would1 not 2™ °ir omplete the evidence needed,liie Mayor of Santa Maria del Tule however, opposed a barrier of adamaiit. Measure the circumference of the tree? Surely. Photograph it?, Indeed, yes. But to take an instrument and bore L from the trunk a plus:' two feet deep and one-half an inchT m diameter? Horrors, no In vain Dr. Yon Schrenk urge 3 that this experiment had been mtde' hundreds of ,times without damage to tlie trees, and that bjr counting the' ;J wV»,:tlie plug he Scoul| .learn the tree's average rate of " growth, and thus, solve one of the great sdentific problems of the world: Jhe Mayor was all humility and sub--7^ nT\T v An^ing he possessed was at the disposition of the distin- - SiS H °t?- Bllt touA the *~ So Dr. Yon Schrenk was compellerj .to content himself with meaiuringthe bole and with taking from thl roof of the city hall the photograph! TT?,™ 11 a *ood tablqb. which* Humboldt one hundred years before, had nailed to the tree, the unim* - paired vitality of winch, for a U i ts , titty centuries, had been shown by a growth of bark covering the tablet

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