Conifers 



(Peziza Willkommii) must be considered to show that 

 the ground or the conditions are unsuitable for the 

 trees. 



Want of light, stagnant humid air, soil which is too 

 wet, too dry, or too poor, or even the attack of insects, 

 bring about a depressed state of health. Larches in this 

 condition will succumb or be injured for life by this 

 dreaded fungus. The spores of it are carried by the wind, 

 and may reach wounds which are 60 feet above the earth. 6 



But farther south, in America, there is a strangely 

 isolated group of one of the oldest living conifers. On 

 the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada in California, at 

 heights of 5000 to 8000 feet, the big trees of Sequoia (or 

 Wellingtonia) gigantea still manage to exist in spite of 

 the demands of millionaires who wish to make dining- 

 room tables of one cross-section of their trunks. As 

 they already form the centre of a thriving tourist-industry, 

 they are quite sufficiently advertised already, and it is 

 unnecessary to say much about these survivals. They 

 reach sometimes 320 feet in height, and may have a 

 diameter of 20 feet. Some are said to have been 3300 

 years old. When grown as specimens in British wood- 

 lands they are not particularly beautiful, and they are not 

 found to be of much importance in economic forestry. 



In South Chile and in Southern Brazil, in the district of 

 San Francisco (i5°-3o° S. lat.), there are still left a few 

 small forests of the monkey puzzle (Araucaria imbricata). 

 They seem to have been surrounded and hemmed in 

 by woods of a far more modern and efficient type. 

 Indeed they are apparently dying out everywhere. 



This is perhaps the oldest type of tree in the world, 

 as is at once impressed upon one's mind. The branches, 

 thickly covered by prickly leaves, makes one wonder 

 as to what extinct animal had to be prevented from 

 browsing on their foliage. But that is not all, for 



241 Q 



