SCENERY. 79 



corded iii Grecian mythology. The trees are so high that you 

 must look twice before you can see their tops, and then you 

 must keep on looking before you can comprehend their height. 

 The best way to see them is to lie down and look up, and re- 

 member that the spire of the Xew York Trinity Church, which 

 is the highest artificial structure in the United States, tower- 

 ing far above all the rest of the American metropolis, though 

 two hundred and eighty-four feet high, would be entirely lost 

 to distant view if set down among these trees. 



The grove covers a space half a mile wide and three-quar- 

 ters of a mile long. Classifying its trees according to their 

 size, w^e find that there is one tree thirty-four feet in diameter; 

 two trees of thirty-three feet ; thirteen between twenty-five 

 and thirty-three ; thirty-six between twenty and twenty-five ; 

 eighty-two between fifteen and twenty ; making a total of one 

 hundred and thirty-four trees between fifteen and thirty-four 

 feet in diameter ; and then there are two hundred and ninety- 

 three between one and fifteen feet through. 



One very large tree has fallen, and a considerable portion 

 of it has been burned ; but appearances indicate that it was 

 nearly forty feet in diameter, and four hundred feet high. 



The Mammoth Tree is a cone-bearing evergreen, belonging 

 to the botanical genus named Ciqyressus (cypress) by Linnasus. 

 After the time of that naturalist, his genus of the Gupressus 

 was divided ; so that the Mammoth Tree would have come 

 under the head of the Taxodium^ w^hich, about the year 1850, 

 Avas again divided by Endlicher, the German botanist, and the 

 redwood-tree was declared to belong to a new genus, called 

 Sequoia. 



In 1853, the mammoth trees first came to the notice of the 

 public. The botanists in San Francisco, engaged in the tur- 

 moil of business, looked at the specimens, but had not time to 

 examine them, and supposed them to be of the same species 

 with the redwood, to which the mammoth tree certainly does 

 bear a very close resemblance. Thinking the tree, however, 

 to be very remarkable on account of its great size, they sent 



