318 SYLVAN WINTER. 



eighteen to twenty inches in length these being 

 the cones of the Pitch Pine, not those of the 

 Wellingtonia, which, curiously enough, are very 

 small, not much larger than a hen's egg. 



' The Calaveras Grove lies about 4700 feet above 

 the sea-level. It was first sighted in the year 1850, 

 by Messrs. Wooster and Whitehead ; and as it 

 was the first collection of these trees discovered, 

 it may be said that it was in this year that these 

 giant specimens of the taxodium family became 

 known to civilization. Since then six " groves " 

 have been discovered, all lying in the Sierra 

 Nevada. In the Mariposa Grove, already men- 

 tioned, there are 365 Giant Trees, and 125 of 

 them have a girth of forty feet. The other 

 groves are the South Park, with 1380 trees; the 

 South Tuolumne, with thirty trees; the San 

 Joaquin, with 700 trees; the Fresno, with 500 

 trees; and a long belt extending for fifty 

 miles between the King's and Kaweah Rivers, 

 where there are several thousand. The South 

 Park Grove is only five miles from the Calaveras 

 Grove.' 



