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VARIETIES OF CUPRESSUS MACROCARPA. 



Monterey in California, The trees occur in small groups or solitary 

 in a narrow belt about two miles long and scarcely more than 

 two hundred yards wide, extending along the coast from Cypress 

 Point southwards to Carmel Bay, mingling gradually with Pinus 

 radiata inland. 



This very restricted habitat is ascribed to the gradual drying of the 

 California!! climate and to the direct action of forest fires which are 



Fig. 63. Old Cypresses fCupressns nutcrosarpaj near Monterey, South California. 

 (From the Gardeners' Chronicle.) 



almost of annual occurrence towards the end of the hot dry summers 

 of South California. One bad forest fire would sweep away every 

 existing Cypress tree in the grove. Few seedlings are to be seen ; 

 animals are allowed to browse at will in the grove and destroy all 

 seedlings as they spring up, and by impoverishing the soil hasten the 

 decay of the older trees.* Here is portrayed a condition of things that 

 clearly forebode the extinction of the tree in its native habitat, but 

 such a catastrophe would be but an episode in its history, and would 



* Garden and Forest, VII. (1894), p. 241. 





