THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 50 



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Supported only by its flexible column, which yields and 

 bends beneath the force of the tempest, the wax-palm on 

 the Andes balances its waving crown in the bosom of the 

 clouds 200 feet above the heights whereon it grows. 



But no tree rears its head towards the sky so boldly as 

 the gigantic cedar of California, the Wellingtonia gigantea. 

 One colossus of this species, now hurled down and stretched 

 upon the rock, presented, when it stood erect and threaten- 

 ing, a height of more than 490 feet; that is to say, about 

 eight times the elevation of a house of five stories. It was 

 above 130 feet in circumference. 



The bark of the trunk of one of these giants of the Amer- 

 ican forests was transported in part to the Crystal Palace at 

 Sydenham, where it formed one of the most splendid curi- 

 osities, until accidentally destroyed by fire in 1866. It was 

 a monstrous column, above 130 feet in height, and which at 

 the level of the ground had a diameter of nearly thirty-four 

 feet. I stood inside this tree along with fifteen people. At 

 San Francisco a piano was placed and a ball given to more 

 than twenty persons on the stump of a Wellingtonia 

 which had been brought thither. The age of this colossus 

 corresponds to its dimensions. By counting the number of 

 annual rings in a transverse section it was ascertained that 

 these monstrous trees must be 3000 or 4000 years old, so 

 that they seem to have been almost contemporary with the 

 biblical creation, and have stood erect and unshaken amidst 

 all the commotions of the o;lobe. 



Alongside of these giants, stretched prostrate on the 

 ground, man only looks like a pigmy, and feels his littleness. 

 He calls them the mammoths of the forest, to show that, 



