4 
a 
tee 
368 TIMEHRI. 
this respeét the Forestry Building was an exception. It 
was made entirely of wood, and had a colonnade com- 
posed of tree trunks from almost every State in the 
Union. Among the interesting contents of this pituresque 
edifice—it looked like a huge chalet surrounded on all 
sides by a wide verandah-—I may mention a seétion of 
yellow fir from Oregon 6 feet 4 inches in diameter and, 
reputed to be 700 years old; a spruce cutting, 9 feet 
9 inches diameter, from a 300 years old forest giant, 305 
feet high, estimated to produce 180,000 feet of lumber; 
and a round seétion of Californian redwood 14 feet 
in diameter, with a mark on its huge disc showing 
the diameter in 1492, the year of COLUMBUS'S dis- 
covery of America, what time the tree had already 
attained the patriarchal age of 475 years! All these 
were very curious, but their interest paled, | think, 
before one of the exhibits in the Federal Building, 
as it was called, the stately and classic struéture put 
up by the United States Government and in which 
were shown historic treasures of the Washington State 
Department, Smithsonian Institute, War Department, 
Post Office Department, and others. Construéted of 
iron, brick, and glass, and covering about 4 acres of 
ground, an o€tagonal dome 150 feet in height, rose from 
its centre, and the most prominent objeét in the spacious 
rotunda thus formed was a seétion of the great Sequoia 
tree from National Park, California. The original tree 
was 26 feet in diameter, 814 feet in circumference, 
and 300 feet in height, and the seétion of which I write 
was taken from it at aheight of 20 feet above the ground ; 
it had to be hollowed out, and divided into seétions and 
hauled by means of teams of sixteen mules each, on heavy 
