Should we not then be amply warranted in asserting this Screw-pine to be many years old, if we were not assured that, as a fact, it has been this instant created? [Illustration: ROOTS OF IRIARTEA.] A phenomenon analogous to that which we have just observed is presented by yonder Pashiuba Palm (_Iriartea exorhiza_). Its straight arrowy stem has shot up to the height of fifty feet, like a slender iron column. On the summit there is the usual divergent crown of leaves that distinguishes this most graceful and queenly tribe; and at the foot, a tall open cone of roots, strangely supporting the column on its apex. "But what most strikes attention in this tree, and renders it so peculiar, is, that the roots are almost entirely above ground. They spring out from the stem, _each one at a higher point than the last_, and extend diagonally downwards till they approach the ground, when they often divide into many rootlets, each of which secures itself in the soil. As fresh ones spring out from the stem, _those below become rotten and die off_; and it is not an uncommon thing to see a lofty tree supported entirely by three or four roots, so that a person may walk erect beneath them, or stand with a tree seventy feet high growing immediately over his head." "In the forests where these trees grow, numbers of young plants of every age may be seen, all miniature copies of their parents, except that they seldom possess more than three legs, which gives them a strange and almost ludicrous appearance."[53] This tall Pashiuba before us, however, is supported on several scores of roots, in various stages of development, some descending through the air, some already fixed in the soil. As the presence of these, moreover, implies the decay and disappearance of earlier ones, their number and height may be accepted as a fair testimony to the age of the tree; independent of what we might have deduced from the trunk and other sources. (My reader will bear in mind, that, throughout this chapter, I am supposing that we have the opportunity of seeing each organism at the moment following that of its creation.) The _Iriartea_ before us, then, notwithstanding its marks of maturity, is but--a new-born infant, I was about to say, rather--a new-made adult.