162 F The Forest Trees of Wiltshire. 
further on the space of the Magazine and the patience of the 
reader, by copying from the Illustrated News of the World, a few 
particulars of this, the largest tree ever yet discovered. It says :— 
“The ‘Bic Tree’ represented in our sketch, is 95 feet in cireum- 
ference, and 300 feet in length. The ‘Turez Graces,’ or ‘ THREE 
Sisters,’ also represented in the sketch, are united at the base, but 
each has a separate trunk measuring in circumference some 92 
feet. The ‘Mrner’s Casin’ has a circumference of 80 feet, while 
its height is reckoned at 300 feet. The ‘ Pionzer’s Casi’ is of 
equal dimensions. There are many other trees of similar magni- 
tude, each of which has been named according to the fancy of the 
emigrants. One tree with the enormous circumference of 110 feet, 
and an elevation of 500 feet, has been called—because he is believed 
to be the oldest tree known in the neighbourhood— Tur FaTHer 
oF THE Forzst.’ We also furnish our readers with an engraving 
termed ‘Tur HorsEpack Rung,’ representing the hollow trunk of 
a tree, which affords space sufficient for a man on horseback to ride 
up the heart of the tree—so we are by our correspondent informed 
—a distance of 75 feet.”—It is scarcely necessary to state, that 
these trees were growing in California. English readers who 
seldom see a tree of a hundred, or much above a hundred feet 
high, and very seldom indeed of above twenty-five or thirty feet 
in circumference, may well be staggered on reading of these giants. 
But accounts of them have been given by so many persons, and 
among them by noblemen and gentlemen of the highest character, 
who have taken California in their travels on purpose to ascertain 
the truth of the reports they had heard, and have come away con- 
firming them, and in some instances adding the measurement of 
still larger ones, that it is impossible to doubt the truth of the 
accounts quoted above. Fully believing; nevertheless one wants 
the evidence of one’s own eyes to realise the fact. Look up at the 
spire of Salisbury Cathedral, and then let fancy paint a tree of 
that height with nearly another hundred feet added to it! 
Reason almost forbids the belief; for reason asks how a column of 
five hundred feet in height, and having a base of less than forty 
feet diameter, could possibly withstand the force of the stormy 
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