REMARKABLE FOREST TREES. 171 



Yorkshire, was examined by Pennant, in 1770, and was 

 then more than twelve hundred years old ; and another, in 

 the churchyard of Braburn, in Kent, according to the 

 measurement of Evelyn, in 1660, had then attained an 

 age of two thousand eight hundred and eighty years, and 

 consequently is now more than three thousand years old. 



The so-called American Cypress (Taxodium distichum), 

 found in Florida, in southern Louisiana, and in Mexico, 

 has not unfrequently, at a height of one hundred and 

 twenty feet above the ground, a circumference of forty 

 feet, and must, therefore, be very old. A fine specimen of 

 this tree now grows in the garden of Chapultepec, Mexico, 

 which was of an immense size at the time of the conquest 

 of Mexico by the Spaniards, in 1520, and was then known 

 as Montezuma's Cypress ; and in the province of Oaxaca, 

 in the same country, still stands the same Cypress which 

 sheltered the troops of Ferdinando Cortez. These trees 

 are at least four thousand years old ; in fact, De Candolle 

 considers them to be much older. 



But by far the most remarkable trees in the world are 

 found in California. The Sequoia gigantea, popularly 

 known in the district where it grows as the " Mammoth 

 Washington Tree," was first discovered by the English 

 traveller and Naturalist, Lob, on the Sierra Nevada, at an 

 elevation of five thousand feet, and near the source of the 

 rivers Stanislaus and San Antonio. These trees belong to 

 the Natural Order Coniferce, or the Pine family, and grow 

 two hundred and fifty and even four hundred feet in 

 height. The bark, which is of a cinnamon color, is from 

 twelve to eighteen inches thick; the wood reddish, but 

 soft and light ; and the stem is from ten to twenty feet in 

 diameter. The branches grow almost horizontally from 

 the stem ; their foliage resembles that of the Cypress; yet, 

 notwithstanding the monstrous size of these trees, their 

 cones are only two inches and a half in length, resembling 

 those of the Weymouth Pine (Pinus strobus) ; whilst the 

 Auracauria, or South American Pine, although far infe- 



