The several kinds of plants vary exceedingly in their degrees of
longevity, some being annual, perfecting their growth within a year,
ripening their seeds and perishing; others are perennial, and continue
to grow and flourish for years and centuries. Warm and cold climates
have much influence on the duration of plants, and, in some few
instances, plants that are annual in cold climates become perennial
when transplanted into warm regions, and the contrary when
transplanted from warm to cold ones. There are some kinds of trees
that are very short-lived, as the peach and the plum; others reach a
great age, as the pear and the apple. Some kinds of forest-trees are
remarkable for their duration, and specimens are in existence
seemingly coeval with the date of the present order of things on our
globe. The oak, chestnut, and pine of our forests, reach the age of
from 300 to 500 years. The cypress or white cedar of our swamps has
furnished individuals 800 or 900 years old. Trees are now living in
England and Constantinople more than 1000 years old, of the yew,
plane, and cypress varieties; and Addison found trees of the boabab
growing near the Senegal, in Africa, which, reckoning from the
ascertained age of others of the same species, must have been nearly
4000 years of age. It may be remarked, that plants of the same variety
attain about the same age in all climates where they are
produced.--_American Courier._