50 



years old, and the annual increase the same, would give the 

 bark the thickness of nearly one half the diameter of the tree ; 

 whereas, in the Philadelphia specimen, at the height of twenty- 

 five feet, the bark was about one sixth of the diameter. Taking 

 this ratio, which will probably be not far from the truth, [as 

 the thickness of the annual layers of wood is greater in the 

 youth of the tree, the diameter of the entire bark would be 

 between five and six feet, supposing none to be lost by ex- 

 foliation ; the probability is, however, that from constant exfo- 

 liation, the bark is no thicker now than it was five hundred years 

 ago. The specimen of foliage is cypress-like, and is probably 

 only one of the two forms common in trees of this family ; it is 

 well known that the deciduous cypress has two forms of leaves. 

 The cones are oblong, and are said to have a thick woody axis ; 

 which cannot be fully verified, from the unwillingness of the 

 owner of the specimens to have them cut into. They will, how- 

 ever, be submitted to Prof. Gray, and will doubtless serve to con- 

 firm or reject the genus Wellingtonia, which name has been 

 given by Dr. Lindley. 



The specimens were accompanied by a lithograph, taken at 

 San Francisco, of the tree from which these specimens were 

 obtained. It is one of many gigantic trees found near the head 

 of Stanislaus River, on the Sierra Nevada, California. Its height 

 was two hundred and ninety feet, its circumference ninety-six 

 feet,^ and its diameter near the ground about thirty-one feet. 

 The age was estimated at three thousand years, which, from the 

 investigations of Prof. Gray on a larger tree of the same genus, 

 is probably too great by at least one thousand years. The size 

 and age of these trees is a matter of much interest ; the one now 

 on exhibition at Philadelphia was sound from the sap-wood to the 

 centre, which is almost never the case in trees of other families, 

 as the Oaks, which often attain a great size. The diameter of 

 the tree in Philadelphia, at five feet from the ground, was over 

 twenty-nine feet ; at eighteen feet, fourteen and a half feet ; at 

 twenty-five feet, twelve and a half feet, the bark being two and 

 a quarter feet thick ; at two hundred feet, about five and a half 

 feet, — its* length being about three hundred and twenty feet. 

 The section, at twenty-five feet from the ground, (without the 



