IV TEMPERATE FOREST REGIONS 87 



Here we find the giant Wellingtonia and redwood, the 

 magnificent Douglas fir, the exquisitely beautiful piceas- 

 nohilis and lasiocarpa, such fine cypresses as Laivsoniana 

 and Lamhcrtiana, such unequalled pines as insiguis and 

 macrocarpa, the well-known handsome thujas, gigantea 

 and Lohhii, and many others. These glorious trees form 

 forests by themselves, surpassing in grandeur those of any 

 other temperate land ; and every one of these grows freely 

 and rapidly with us (which they do not in Eastern 

 America), and, if grown under natural conditions, would 

 probably attain nearly as great a size as in their native 

 country. Their extreme beauty has, however, caused them 

 to be almost always grown singly as specimens, and even 

 thus the rapidity of their growth is often amazing. The 

 Wellingtonia will reach twenty feet in ten years ; the 

 Douglas fir grows even more rapidly when young, and a 

 specimen at Dropmore, fifty years old, is now more than a 

 hundred feet high, while its branches, spreading on the 

 ground, cover a space sixty-six feet in diameter. The 

 beautiful grass -green Finns insignis at the same place 

 reached sixty-eight feet high in thirty-four years ; and 

 were these trees planted in masses, so as to draw each 

 other upward, and cause the lower branches to drop off as 

 in their native forests, they would almost certainly grow 

 even more rapidly, and the younger members of the present 

 generation might live to walk amid forests of these noble 

 trees not much inferior to those which excite so much 

 admiration on the mountains of California and Oregon. 



Here, again, there is no question of success. The 

 experiment has been made already for us hundreds of 

 times over, and we have only to profit by it. These trees 

 succeed well in every part of England without exception, 

 and they would certainly not fail at Epping. An expanse 

 of a hundred or two hundred acres covered with the 

 coniferous trees of Western America, planted in masses, 

 groups, or belts, and with winding paths, broad glades, 

 and occasional shrub-planted openings admitting of free 

 access to every part of it, would probably be even more 

 attractive than the forest of Eastern America. For many 

 of these trees are exquisitely beautiful objects in their 



