THE REDWOOD IN THE OAKLAND HILLS. 163 
stump, located on the hillside, two feet high on the upper 
side and eight on the lower, measured twenty-one feet across 
without the bark, this having been stripped off; and the bark 
would have increased this diameter to twenty-two feet and a 
half. The most remarkable thing in this group consisted of 
the united stumps of three trees which had grown from their 
youth in such close proximity that their trunks had coalesced, 
s0 as to give the appearance of one enormous tree whose 
trunk presented below, a body of solid wood fifty-seven feet 
in diameter. The places of coalescence were traceable, so 
that the separate factors entering into this triple trunk could 
be measured, their diameters being respectively eighteen, 
twenty-one, and eighteen feet. A very reasonable and 
moderate estimate of the stature of these trees when standing 
would make them three hundred feet high. The writer has 
seen a Sugar Pine (Pinus Lambertiana) twelve feet in 
diameter the height of which was three hundred feet; and 
another eight feet thick, the measurement of which when 
felled was something over three hundred feet. 
The phenomenon of a lateral coalescence in the trunks of 
trees standing in close contact, though rarely mentioned, is 
perhaps not so very uncommon. I am familiar with a pair 
of spruce trees in an Oregon forest whose trunks, each about 
twelve feet in thickness, are firmly coalescent for about twelve 
feet from the ground upward, where they separate and 
present two symmetrical shafts, neither of which can be 
estimated at less than three hundred feet. Ata meeting of 
the California Academy of Sciences on July 1st, 1867, I read 
a paper on the redwoods, in which, reference was made to 
‘this connate growth. In the course of a discussion which 
ensued, Mr. R. E. CO. Stearns mentioned that in Del Norte 
County, on coming into a redwood forest, he had observed 
quite a number of such trees. In one instance there were 
four trees grown together, forming a solid trunk for fifteen 
feet above ground level. Dr. Veatch stated that near Arcata, 
on Humboldt Bay, there were two trunks growing together 
