IN CALIFORNIA 165 



United States Government. In it the Big Tree is 

 called Sequoia Washingtoniana. It is a humiliat- 

 ing fact that this noblest of California trees is really 

 without a universally accepted name among the sci- 

 entists of the world. Those who place the spirit be- 

 fore the letter are content still to call it Sequoia 

 gigantea, as Dr. Jepson does in his "Silva of Cali- 

 fornia"; while the adherents of the letter of the 

 law continue at loggerheads between Sequoia Well- 

 ingtonia and Sequoia Washingtoniana. Meantime, 

 the unlearned, who so often put a touch of poetry 

 into the common names of plants, have been sin- 

 gularly barren of fancy in the naming of this most 

 inspiring of native growths, and prosily call it just 

 Big Tree. 



Of all the Big Tree groves the one with perhaps 

 the most of human history connected with it, is that 

 Calaveras grove which Dowd discovered, near the 

 north fork of the Stanislaus River in Calaveras 

 County. It is privately owned and consists of about 

 a hundred trees, and a hotel and post office near by 

 enable travelers to visit it without leaving civiliza- 

 tion behind them. Very soon after the discovery, 

 the bark nearly a foot and a half thick was 

 stripped from one tree for a distance of thirty feet 

 from the ground, and exhibited in many places as a 

 curiosity, a part being eventually transported to 



