"Look, now, below these withered midribs, lifting up the most drooping of them. The stem is marked with great oval scars; and see, this old frond-rib has come off in my hand, leaving just such a scar, and adding one more to the number that were there before. And look down the stem; it is studded all over with these oval scars. There are a hundred and fifty at least; but I cannot count them nearly all, for towards the lower part they become more undefined, and the growth of the stem has thrown them further apart; and besides, there is, as you observe, a matted mass of tangled rootlets, like tarred twine, which, springing from between the lower scars, increases downwards, till the whole inferior extremity of the stem is encased in the dank and reeking mass. "You can have no doubt that every one of these scars indicates where a leaf has grown, where it has waved its time, and whence, after death and decay, it at length sloughed away. The form of the uppermost, which are not distorted by age, agrees exactly with the outline of the bulging base of the candelabrum-like frond; the arrangement of the scars is that of the fronds; and you may notice in every scar marks where the horseshoe-shaped plates of woody fibre have been broken off, which once passed into the interior of the stem from the midrib of the frond. "These scars, then, are ocular demonstrations of former fronds; we may no more doubt that fronds were once growing from these spots, than we may that the green and leafy arches were once coiled up in a circinate vernation. They are the record of the past history of this organism, and they evidently reach far back into time. The periodic ratio of development of new fronds may be, perhaps, roughly estimated at six in the course of a year. Now there are about a dozen unfolded or unfolding, as many withering midribs, and about a hundred and fifty leaf-scars that we can count with ease, not reckoning such as are indistinct, nor such as are concealed beneath the tangled drapery of roots. [Illustration: LEAF-SCARS OF TREE-FERN.] "I have no hesitation, then, in pronouncing this plant to be thirty years old; it is probably much older, but it is, at least, as old as this." Such is the report of our botanical adviser; such is his argument; and we cannot but admit that it is invulnerable; his conclusion is inevitable, but for one fact, which he is not aware of. There is one objection, however, to which it is open--a fatal one; you and I know that the Tree-fern is not five minutes old, _for it was created but this moment_.