IN CALIFORNIA 237 



and although perhaps no specimen now standing in 

 the State is much over sixty years old, one encoun- 

 ters here and there, in Central California particu- 

 larly, trees a yard through at the base and with 

 crowns casting a shade fifty or sixty feet in diameter. 

 The most famous of these great figs is one planted 

 in 1851 on General Bidwell's Eancho Chico in the 

 Sacramento Valley. Colonel C. C. Eoyce, formerly 

 manager of the ranch, informs me that measure- 

 ments of this tree taken a few years ago, showed it 

 to have a trunk circumference at base of 12 feet, 8 

 inches, a height of 75 feet, and a spread of branches 

 of 115 feet to 118 feet. One of the principal limbs 

 measured about two feet in diameter. This remark- 

 able tree, which is still standing though now be- 

 cause of infirmities in the hands of the tree doctors, 

 had the habit of extending its lower branches down- 

 ward until they touched the ground. There taking 

 root, they followed the example of the parent stock, 

 dropping branches to the earth in their turn, and 

 doubtless the tree would have continued indefinitely 

 so spreading, had progress not been curtailed by 

 pruning. 



It behooves one, then, who plants a fig tree in his 

 garden, as people all over California like to do, to 

 give it plenty of elbow room a radius of twenty feet 

 all about it being none too much. These great old 



