CONIFER. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 143 
where it is employed as a substitute for red cedar in the manufacture of lead pencils. Logs with 
curled or contorted grain are cut into veneers, which are valued by the cabinet-maker. In California 
the bark has been utilized to stuff furniture, and to cover the logs of corduroy roads and of bridges 
over forest streams.’ 
Sequoia sempervirens was discovered in 1796 by Archibald Menzies, the surgeon and naturalist of 
Vancouver’s voyage of exploration, probably on the shores of the Bay of San Francisco, where it was 
once common and a conspicuous feature of the vegetation, and was rediscovered by David Douglas. It 
was introduced into English gardens in 1846 by Karl Theodor Hartweg, and flourishes in the regions 
of western and southern Europe,’ and in the southeastern United States, where it has proved hardy in 
the neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina. In European nurseries a few abnormal seedling 
varieties have appeared, and are occasionally cultivated by the lovers of curious trees. 
Among American trees the Redwood is exceeded in size only by Sequoia Wellingtonia. 
Towering above its companions in the forest, with its bright colored massive trunk and its lustrous 
foliage, it is unsurpassed in magnificence by any other conifer, and no coniferous forest of the continent 
equals in impressiveness, beauty, and luxuriance the Redwood forests of northern California. The 
demand for the wood of this tree, and its accessibility to tide-water, are rapidly destroying the best 
forests, which soon will be dim memories only ; but the peculiar and remarkable power of the Redwood 
when cut to reproduce itself by numerous shoots from the stump, which soon attain a large size, and 
often coalesce, forming circular groves, which mark the site of the original trunk, promises to insure 
its existence as long as the California coast ranges are bathed in the fogs of the Pacific Ocean. 
1 Kellogg, Forest Trees of California, 26. 3 Veitch, Man. Conif. 212. 
2 Gard. Chron. ser. 3, vi. 240 ; viii. 302. 
