2o6 TAXODINE^ AND ARAUCARINE^ 



others of the surrounding trees that we know so well 

 have in the same time — namely, fifty years — 

 accomplished Jth of the briefer span of life allotted 

 to them on the law of averages. Our Wellingtonia 

 may, then, be not inappropriately likened to a large, 

 overgrown pup, disporting himself in a kennel, among 

 the more symmetrical and finished forms of full-grown 

 animals. Whether he grows here to anything like 

 the height he attains on his native heath, or whether, 

 if he does, he may not mar the proportionate effects 

 of our home scenes, these are matters to be adjudged 

 upon by future generations, in that indeterminate 

 date called aeons to come. At present it is the Silver 

 Firs and a few Douglas and Sitka planted sixty and 

 seventy years ago that occasionally dwarf their 

 surroundings, but not with any bad effect. Perhaps 

 in days to come they will succumb to the superior 

 height of the Sequoias. 



We must recollect, too, that the placing and 

 planting of trees should always be, as far as possible, 

 according to the determining agencies of the surround- 

 ing circumstances. With the exception of Puzzle 

 Monkeys, Wellingtonias are probably the most mis- 

 placed of trees planted in the reign of Queen Victoria. 

 At this present moment their unpopularity is just 

 now at its meridian. When the Sequoias have out- 

 grown all the improprieties of youth, when they have 

 become more square-headed at their summit, when 

 they have reached the dignity of old age, or, like 

 Ezekiel's Cedars, when they have " formed their 

 heads among the thick branches " what will be the 

 view taken of them ? When the grandchildren, or 

 more so still, the great-great-grandchildren of those 

 to-day have become, in the inevitable course of time, 

 grey-headed and old, as did their forefathers before 

 them, and when they come to look upon these trees 

 advanced to their nearer full, what will be the view 



