304 SEQUOIA. 



long. Scales, numerous, wedge-shaped, from sixteen to twenty 

 in number, smallest near the base, transversely keeled, very 

 much sunken in the middle, irregularly shaped, wrinkled on 

 the summit, and furnished in the middle of the hollow centre 

 with a stout horn-shaped blunt point directed outwards. Seeds, 

 from three to five under each scale, variously-shaped, and 

 winged. 



A lofty evergreen tree, growing from 200 to 300 feet high, 

 and from twenty to thirty feet in circumference. One tree, called 

 by the American settlers * the Giant of the Forest,' measures 

 270 feet high, and fifty-five feet in circumference, six feet from 

 the ground ; and there is at St. Petersburgh a horizontal slab of 

 the wood, received by the late Dr. Fischer from the North-west 

 coast of America, which measures fifteen feet in diameter, and 

 1008 annual rings mark its age. The timber is of a beautiful 

 red colour, fine, and close-grained, but light and brittle, and 

 never attacked by insects. It is the Californian Redwood or 

 Bastard Cedar of the settlers, and was first discovered by 

 Menzies in 1796, on the North-west coast of America, but has 

 since been found abundantly all over Upper California. Hart- 

 weg found it plentiful on the mountains of Santa Cruz, about 

 sixty miles from Monterey, 270 feet high, with a stem clear of 

 branches sixty or seventy feet. 



It is quite hardy. 



