ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON THE SEQUOIA (WELLING- 

 TONIA) GIGANTEA. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE REVUE HORTICOLE. 



Our readers now know what to think of the giant trees of California, which so much 

 interested the attention of the horticultural public, and persons in general, during 

 the closing months of the past year. The various articles which have been pub- 

 lished in the Revue, and especially the learned notice by M. Decaisne, have removed 

 all doubt on the subject. We thought nevertheless that, on account of the peculiar 

 interest attached to this tree, it would be agreeable to amateurs to publish some new 

 details collected in August, 1854, by an American traveller, Dr. F. Winslow, who 

 communicated them to a journal published in San Francisco, the California Far- 

 mer, from which we have borrowed them through the medium of the Botanical 

 Journal of M. Hooker and the Gardener' s Chronicle. 



We have said that the author of these remarks was an American ; this fact should 

 be known, inasmuch as it explains the somewhat emphatic tone of his narrative and 

 the exaggerations which have crept into it, probably from inadvertence or from excess 

 of admiration, and which may be readily forgiven him. lie is less excusable in the 

 impertinent remarks which, in a transport of misplaced natural self-love, he has di- 

 rected to Dr. Lindley, for venturing to give a name to a California tree without con- 

 sulting the Americans. The reasons for these objections will be seen presently; ad 

 interim, we shall proceed to give the most useful parts of his travelling reminiscences. 



"The Great Tree, (thus he distinguishes the Sequoia gigantea,') is peculiar to 

 the Sierra Nevada, and grows no where else on the globe. I may even add, as far 

 as my information extends, that it is entirely confined to a narrow basin of 200 acres 

 at most, of which the soil is silicious and strewn with blocks of Lignite. This ba- 

 sin is very damp, and retains here and there pools of water; some of the largest of 

 the trees extend their roots directly into the stagnant water, or into the brooks. 

 There are more than a hundred which may be be considered as having reached the 

 extreme limits of growth which the species can attain. One of our countrymen, Mr. 

 Blake, measured one, of which the trunk, immediately above the root, was 94 feet 

 in circumference. Another, which had fallen from old age, or had been uprooted by 

 a tempest, was lying near it, of which the length from the roots to the top of branches 

 was 450 feet. A great portion of this monster still exists, and, according to Mr. 

 Lapham, the proprietor of the locality, (and who has undoubtedly appropriated to 

 himself all trees by right of occupation,) at 350 feet from the roots the trunk 

 measured 10 feet in diameter. By its fall, this tree has overthrown another not less 

 collossal, since at the origin of the roots it is 40 feet in diameter. This one, which 



