324 VIEWS, &C. PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLAXTS. 



of Norfolk Island, and A. Cookii [R. Brown] of New Cale- 

 donia). Corda, Presl, Goppert, and Endlicker have already- 

 found five fossil Araucariae in lias, in chalk, and in lignite.* 



Pinus Douglasii (Sab.) in the valleys of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains and at the Columbia River (north lat. 43°— -52°). That 

 meritorious Scotch botanist, whose name this tree bears, 

 suffered a dreadful death in 1833, when he came from New 

 California to collect plants on the Sandwich Islands. He 

 inadvertently fell into a pit, into which one of the wild bulls 

 of that country, always viciously disposed, had previously 

 fallen. This traveller has described from accurate measure- 

 ments a stem of P. Douglasii, which at three feet from the 

 ground was 57^ feet round, and 245 feet high.f 



Pinus Trigona (Rafinesque), on the western slope of the 

 Rocky Mountains. ;£ This "gigantic fir" was measured with 

 great care ; the girth of the stem at 6^ feet above the ground 

 was often from 38 to 45 feet. One stem was 300 feet high, 

 and without branches for the first 192 feet. 



Pinus Strobus (in the eastern part of the United States of 

 North America, especially on this side of the Mississippi, but 

 also again in the Rocky Mountains, from the source of the 

 Columbia to Mount Hood, from 43° to 54° north lat.), in 

 Europe called the Weymouth Pine, and in North America 

 the White Pine, commonly no more than 160 to 190 feet 

 high, but several have been seen in New Hampshire of 250 

 and 266 feet.§ 



Sequoia Gigantea (Endl. ; the Condylocarpus, Sal.), of New 

 California, like the Pinus trigona, about 300 feet high. 



The nature of the soil and the conditions of heat and 

 moisture, on which the nourishment of plants simultaneously 

 depends, promote, it must be admitted, the development 

 and the increase of the number of the individuals in a 

 species ; but the gigantic height attained by the stems of a 

 few among the many nearly allied species of the same 



* Endlicher, Conifer ce fossil es, p. 301. 



+ See Journal of the Royal Institution, 1826, p. 325. 



X See description in Lewis and Clarke's Travels to the Source of the 

 Missouri River and across the American Continent to the Pacific 

 Ocean (1804--6), 1814, p. 456. 



§ Dwight, Travels, vol. i. p. 36, and Emerson, Report on the Trees 

 and Shrubs growing naturally in the Forests of Massachusetts, 1846, 

 p. 60--66. 



