430 GIGANTIC CONIFERS. 



must perforce be opened to the splendours of the sea, the undulating 

 summits of snow-crowned mountains, the sapphire vault of the starry 

 heavens. Those things realize to us, at once and with impressive 

 force, the ubiquitous majesty of the Divine Builder. And it is well 

 that they should lift us for a while above the materialism of our daily 

 lives into a purer atmosphere of thought and feeling should bid us, 

 while still lingering in the dusty track, expand our souls to hear 



" The mighty waters rolling evermore." 



It is not only in tropical regions that we meet with the giants of 

 the vegetable world. Europe possesses a few of them ; isolated, it is 

 true, but comparable in their stature to the most robust denizens of 

 the Torrid Zone : such are the chestnut-tree of Etna, and the plane of 

 Boudjoukdere', near Constantinople, of which so many travellers have 

 spoken. The remains of the virgin forests of North America also 

 abound in species analogous to our own, and capable of attaining, with 

 an almost incalculable longivity, truly extraordinary proportions. 



The lofty table-lands of California (the Rocky Mountains) nourish 

 an entire tribe of gigantic Coniferse, frequently assembled in immense 

 forests. The Pinus Lambertiana, the Pinus Sabiniana, and the 

 Pinus insignis, are not less than 160 to 180 feet in height; the 

 Dous/las Fir boasts of an almost equal stature, with a circumference 

 which varies from 18 to 36 feet. Yet these colossal trees are sur- 

 passed by the Sequoia sempervirens, which is 240 to 260 feet high, 

 and by the Titan of Titans, the huge Wellingtonia gigantea, which 

 is also a Sequoia. I shall mention a few individuals of the latter 

 species, whose dimensions may defy all comparison with the greatest 

 trees of the Tropics. 



According to Miiller, about ninety-four of these Coniferae flourish 

 on a plateau of the Sierra Nevada, at an altitude of 5400 feet. They 

 are distributed in small groups over a fertile soil. The gold-seekers 

 have named one of them the " Miner's Cabin." Its trunk, 320 feet 

 in height, presents an excavation 16 feet in width. The "Three 



