THE WELLIXGTONIA GIGANTEA. 193 



handsome and thriving specimens occurring in various districts. One 

 in particular is perhaps deserving of special notice here, as "being 

 probably at the present time the tallest specimen in the United 

 Kingdom ; we refer to the tree at Cecil, county Tyrone, which, 

 although only planted fourteen years ago, is already about 45 feet 

 in height, and growing luxuriantly. 



In looking at the illustration, one cannot fail to be struck by the 

 bare and scant appearance of branches forming the head of the tree, 

 a peculiarity very unlike the habit of the young specimens of the 

 Wellingtonia as known to us in this country; but the representa- 

 tion, as the writer has learned from an eye-witness of the big trees, 

 is quite accurate. The peculiarity of the trees in their native habitats 

 is not their umbrageous heads or wide sweep of branches, but their 

 immense massive trunks. A traveller in California in 1873 gives 

 the writer the following account of his visit to the giants : — " On 

 my way to the Losamite valley I took the Mariposa ' trail/ and 

 there with two friends, one the travelling artist of the ' London 

 Illustrated News,' went seven miles out of the way through the pine 

 forest on horseback to see the big trees, as they are called. This 

 was on the 9th May last (1873). "With regard to the altitude at 

 which the trees are grown I cannot inform you exactly, but it could 

 not be less than from 5000 to 6000 feet above the level of the sea. 

 The highest of the trees, the guide told us, were over 300 feet high ; 

 but in a forest, with other trees intervening to obstruct the sight, 

 it is difficult, on getting to a proper distance, to get a full view of 

 any tree in particular so as to form a judgment of its actual height. 

 The big trees all had the appearance of being withered or withering 

 at the top, and their height did not at all correspond with their 

 circumference. As my object in going to see the trees was more for 

 pleasure than with any scientific purpose, I was not provided with 

 a measuring line to take the dimensions of any of them, but for 

 curiosity, the three of us and the guide with our horses, got as close 

 as we could to the root of one of the largest, and we did not half 

 encircle it." 



It is a curious fact that two cones of the genus Sequoia (Welling- 

 tonia) have been found in a fossil state in this country. May we 

 not, therefore, in introducing this tree be only restoring to the flora 

 of Great Britain one of its former treasures, now long extinct, and 

 unknown for countless aa;es 1 



