SEQUOIA WELLINGTONIA. 277 



The first white man who saw the " Big Trees " was probably 

 John Bidwill, who crossed the Sierra Nevada, in 1841, from the east 

 into California, when he passed in haste through the Calaveras Grove, 

 at that time Indian country and exceedingly dangerous to traverse, but 

 he made no mention of his discovery till after the trees had been 

 seen by the hunter, Dowd, eleven years later. In 1852, Dowd, while 

 following a wounded bear, passed through the forests of Pinus Lambertiana 

 and P. ponderosa, and entered the Calaveras Grove where he saw the 

 gigantic trees for the first time and communicated his discovery to his 

 comrades. Shortly afterwards Dr. Kellogg forwarded specimens to 

 Doctors John Torrey and Asa Gray, and he also informed 

 William Lobb of the discovery.* Lobb, who had been sent on a 

 collecting mission to California by the late Mr. James Veitch, was at 

 that time staying at Monterey, but he lost no time in making his 

 way to the Calaveras Grove where he collected a large quantity of 

 cones and seeds which, with two living plants and herbarium specimens, 

 he brought to England late in the autumn of 1853, and from him 

 was obtained the first authentic account of the " Big Trees." The 

 specimens brought home by Lobb were placed in the hands of 

 Dr. Lindley for determination, and he, believing the tree to be generically 

 distinct from the Redwood, created for its reception a new genus 

 which he named Wellingtoniaf in these terms : " The most appropriate 

 name for the most gigantic tree that has been revealed to us by 

 modern discovery is that of the greatest of modem heroes ; let it 

 then bear henceforward the name of Wellingtonia gigantea. Lindley's 

 generic name was, however, soon after challenged by both European 

 and American botanists, and when staminate flowers which Lindley 

 had not seen were procurable and were found to be identical in 

 structure with those of the Redwood Sequoia sempervirens, the conclusion 

 was inevitable, a conclusion strengthened by the identity in structure 

 also of the ovuliferous flowers and cones, and by the similarity of the 

 two trees in stature, bark, ramification and even in certain states of 

 the foliage. 



The controversy that arose respecting the generic name of the " Big 

 Trees" is now a thing of the past, but the change in the specific name 

 here adopted may seem to non-botanical readers to require explanation. 

 One of the first botanists who called into question Lindley's genus 

 Wellingtonia was Dr. Seemann, editor of a scientific periodical named 

 "Bonplandia." In the issue of this publication for February, 1855, 

 Dr. Seemann distinctly recognised the Wellingtonia of Lindley to be a 

 second species of Sequoia and accordingly named it Sequoia Wellingtoniaf 

 Lindley's specific name gigantea having been previously taken up by 

 Endlicher for an undescribed form of the Redwood. The late 



* C. H. Shinn in Garden and Forest, II. 614. 



f The public funeral of the Duke of Wellington in St. Paul's Cathedral had taken place 

 but little more than a year previously. 



J Ich erkenne Wellingtonia gigantea als eine wahre Sequoia imd erlaube mir sie Sequoia 

 Wellingtonia zu nennen. Der alte species Name konnte deshalb nicht beibehalten werden, 

 weil derselben bereits von Endlicher einem Nondescript verliehen worden ist. Seemann in 

 Bonplandia loc. tit. 



SEQUOIA GIGANTEA, Endl. Sequoia foliis linearibus, 1| 2" acutis subtus glauco pulveru- 

 lentis. Habitat in California (Dougl.). Arbor trecentorum peduni altitudinem attingens, 

 trunci ambitu triginta psdali. Synopsis Coniferarum, p. 198. This was published in 1847 

 or five years prior to Dowel's discovery of the "Big Trees" of the Calaveras Grove. 



