3 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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SOME CTJKIOUS VEGETABLE GROWTHS. 



By W. H. LAEEABEE. 



THE importance of trees to the earth and to life does not need to 

 be insisted upon. The condition of treeless regions is almost a 

 demonstration that without them the soil would not be tillable and 

 life would not be endurable. It is, therefore, natural that they should 

 have at all times shared the special regards of men ; and that not only- 

 particular species, but individual trees, should in their times and places 

 have been hallowed with a sacred, historical, legendary, romantic, or 

 mythical interest. The list of such trees, if one should undertake to 

 make it out, would fill a large catalogue. Our own country and time, 

 commonplace as their characteristics are supposed to be, are not with- 

 out them. Other trees have become famous by reason of their ex- 

 traordinary size, or some other remarkable features of their growth ; 

 and in these points we are able to present specimens with respectable 

 claims to honor. The big trees of California are equaled among the 

 trees of modern, and, so far as is known, of ancient, periods only by 

 a few Australian eucalyptuses. Many of the most remarkable speci- 

 mens of vegetable growth are familiar by description ; others are 

 added to the list, from time to time, as new quarters of the earth are 

 more thoroughly explored and their forests more closely examined, or 

 seen with eyes keener in observation. 



The forests of Europe still contain a few remarkable trees, the 

 history of which has not become trite by familiarity. Mr. Gaston 

 Tissandier's " La Nature " furnishes us with descriptions and illustra- 

 tions of two noteworthy specimens of these growths. 



Switzerland has its old chestnut-trees on the banks of Lake Leman, 

 and the ancient linden of Fribourg, the history of which is said to go 

 back to the time of the conflicts with Charles the Bold. M. Louis 

 Pire, President of the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium, has found 

 a fir-tree in the forest of Alliaz, Canton of Vaud, which he believes 

 to be still older than the linden of Fribourg, and considers entitled 

 to be regarded as the oldest and most remarkable tree in the canton, 

 if not in the whole confederation. It is growing near the baths of 

 Alliaz, at a height of about thirteen hundred feet above the hotel, 

 and forty-five hundred feet above the sea, surrounded by a forest of 

 firs, which it overtops by more than thirty feet. The trunk of this 

 tree is ten metres, or a little more than thirty feet, in circumference 

 at the base. At about a yard from the ground it puts out, on the 

 south side, seven offshoots, which have grown into trunks as strong 

 and vigorous as those of the other trees in the forest. Bent and 

 gnarled at the bottom, these side-trunks soon straighten themselves 

 up and rise perpendicularly and parallel to the main stem. This feat- 



