BOTANY. 355 



not taller than some of the trees of Australia, is the largest 

 and most wonderful production of the vegetable kingdom. It 

 reaches a height of 300 feet, and a diameter of 35 feet, and 

 some specimens which have fallen down, were probably still 

 larger. From all the larger trees the tops have been broken 

 off by the snows, so that their normal height must be not 

 less than 350 feet. It belongs to the Linnean genus Ou- 

 pressus, which was afterwards divided, and the new genus 

 Taxodium, in which the redwood belonged, was created ; but in 

 1850, Endlicher, a German botanist, made another division, 

 and gave to the redwood a genus called the Sequoia. In this 

 the Big Tree properly belongs. The two trees bear a remark- 

 able resemblance to each other in the color, the texture of the 

 wood and bark, in the color, form, development, and distribu- 

 tion of the foliage, and even in size, for some of the redwoojds 

 grow to be twenty feet in diameter, and 275 feet high. The 

 specific difference of the Sequoia of the Sierra from that of the 

 Coast Mountains, was discovered in 1853 by Lindley, a British 

 botanist, who undertook to gratify his national vanity by 

 creating a new genus, and naming the tree the Wettingtonia 

 gigantea. The differences, however, were not generic in their 

 character, and botanists generally repudiate his new genus, 

 and call the tree the Sequoia gigantea. It is indigenous only 

 on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, between latitudes 

 36 30', and 38 30', at elevations between 3,000 and 5,000 

 feet above the sea ; north of 37 20', it is found only in small 

 and widely separated groves ; south of that line it exists in 

 belts of forest five or ten miles long. The seeds have been 

 sent to many remote countries, and young giant sequoias are 

 found as ornaments in many gardens of Europe, as well as in 

 the valleys of California. 



282. Redwood. The redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is 

 the second in size and the first in commercial value of all the 

 trees in California, though not much superior to the sugar-pine 

 in either respect. It is found in dense forests, in which many 



