324 AMEEICAN FOREST-TEEES. 



beeches and elms and birclies, as sturdy as tlie migbtiest of their 

 progenitors, are still no rarity.* 



California fortunately still preserves her magnificent sequoias, 

 which rise to the height of three hundred feet, and sometimes, 

 as we are assured, even to three hundred and sixty and four 

 hundred feet, and she has also pines and cedars of scarcely in- 

 ferior dimensions. The pubHc being now convinced of the 

 importance of preserving these colossal trees, it is very probable 

 that the fear of their total destruction may prove groundless, 

 and we may still hope that some of them may survive even till 

 that distant future when the skill of the forester shall have raised 

 from their seeds a progeny as lofty and as majestic as those which 

 now exist, f 



* The forest-trees of the Northern States do not attain to extreme longevity 

 in the dense woods. Dr, Williams found that none of the huge pines, the age 

 of which he ascertained, exceeded three hundred and fifty or four hundred 

 years, though he quotes a friend who thought he had noticed trees consider- 

 ably older. The oak lives longer than the pine, and the hemlock-spruce is 

 perhaps equally long-lived. A tree of this latter species, cut within my knowl- 

 edge in a thick wood, counted four hundred and eighty-six, or, according to 

 another observer, five hundred annual circles. 



Great luxuriance of animal and vegetable production is not commonly ac- 

 companied by long duration of the individual. The oldest men are not found 

 in the crowded city ; and in the tropics, where life is prolific and precocious, 

 it is also short. The most ancient forest-trees of which we have accounts have 

 not been those groAving in thick woods, but isolated specimens, with no taller 

 neighbor to intercept the light and heat and air, and no rival to share the nutri- 

 ment afforded by the soil. 



The more rapid growth and greater dimensions of trees standing near the 

 boundary of the forest, are matters of familiar observation. "Long experi- 

 ence has shown that trees growing on the confines of the wood may be cut at 

 sixty years of age as advantageously as others of the same species, reared in 

 the depth of the forest, at a hundred and twenty. We have often remarked, 

 in our Alps, that the tr\mk of trees upon the border of a grove is most de- 

 veloped or enlarged upon the outer or open side, where the branches extend 

 themselves farthest, while the concentric circles of growth are most uniform 

 in those entirely surroimded by other trees, or standing entirely alone." — A. 

 and Gr. Villa, Necessitd dei BoscM, pp. 17, 18. 



f California must surrender to Australia the glory of possessing the tallest 

 trees. According to Dr. Mueller, Director of the Government Botanic Gar- 

 den at Melbourne, a Eucalyptus, near HealesviUe, measured 480 feet in height. 

 Later accounts speak of trees of the same species fully 500 feet in height. 

 See ScHLELDEN, Fur Baum und Wald, p. 21. The Journal of Forestry, 

 No. XX., p. 581, quotes from the Bivista de Monies, a notice of a eucalyptus 



