AGE OF PLANTS AND TREES. Plants are designated as, annual, those which die at the end of a season of growth; biennial, those which live two years, and perennial, those which live and grow from year to year. As a rule with plants as with animals, when young they are more succulent than when at full maturity. When in full vigor their vessels are filled with juices elaborated by the leaves, but as age in creases their powers of assimilation grow less and less, until at length they die and decay. The age of trees may be determined with consid erable certainty by cutting a cross section of the stem or trunk and counting the annular growths or rings. Yet in the case of very old trees much difficulty is experienced; so that here again, as with very old animals, the age can only be approximately ascertained. In animal life, the individual retains vigor for about three times the period required for it to attain maturity. Thus the sheep naturally lives about ten years, swine about the same, cattle fifteen years, and the horse eighteen to twenty years. Yet individ uals, in exceptional cases, attain far greater ages, as we see in man, who should retain vigor until the age of sixty, and yet in some cases attains the age of more than 100 years. So horses some times attain the extreme age of forty years, but always lose vigor when beyond twenty years, and generally, through abuse, before the age of twelve years. To return to trees, the oak begins to lose extreme vigor of growth after about sixty years, the elm at fifty, the spruce at forty. Thus at these ages, or younger, it may be taken as being the most profitable time to cut such trees. Again, it has been said that the fastest growing trees are the shortest lived. This, however, is not true. The cottonwood, for instance, is an extremely fast-growing tree while young, and yet it is one of the monarchs of the western allu vial bottom lands, and lives to a great age. The
slocust, pseud-acacia, is a fast-growing tree, and its timber is one of the most lasting known. The age of historical trees is interesting. The oak at Langton Wood, England, was credited with being 1,000 years old. In England there are yew trees that are older than the time of King John, and the chestnut of Yarmouth is said to have been growing there in the time of William the Conqueror. There is a lime tree at Trons, in the Grisons, 600 years old. In the palace gardens in Grenada, Spain, were cypresses thought to be 900 years old. The deciduous at Chapultepec are over 5,000 years old. The Baobab trees of Africa are as old as this, and the giant red woods of Cali fornia and some trees in Australia have been thought the oldest trees living, as they are the largest. Our American horticultural poet, Hemp stead, thus chastely describes these sylvan mon archs of California: They were green when in the rushee lay and moaned the Hebrew child; They were growing when the granite of the Pyramids were piled; Green when Punic hosts at Canine bound the victor'e gory sheaves, And their grim and mangled bodies lay around like au tumn leaves ; From their tops the crows were calling when the streets of Rome were grass.
And the brave Three Hundred with their bodies blocked the rocky pass; In their boughs the owl was booting when upon the Hill of Mars Paul rung out the coming judgment, pointing upward to the stars; Here, with loving hand transplanted, in the noonday breeze they wave.
And by night, in silent seas of silver. arrowed moonbeams lave.
MIL or AGY. Chili= pepper, Capsicum baccatum.