198 FOREST CtfliTtJEE AND 



of which, as far as the writer is aware, rise in their 

 favorite haunts at the Sierra Nevada to about four 

 hundred and fifty feet. Still, one of the mammoth 

 trees measured, it is said, at an estimated height of 

 three hundred feet, eighteen feet in diameter ! Thus 

 to Victorian trees for elevation the palm must appa- 

 rently be conceded. A standard of comparison we 

 possess in the spire of the Munster of Strasbourg, the 

 Highest of any cathedral of the globe, which sends 

 its lofty pinnacle to the height of four hundred and 

 forty -six feet, or in the great pyramid of Cheops, 

 four hundred and eighty feet high, which, if raised 

 in our ranges, would be overshadowed probably by 

 Eucalyptus- trees. 



The enormous height attained by not isolated, buf 

 vast masses of our timber-trees in the rich diluvial 

 deposits of sheltered depressions within Victorian 

 ranges, finds its principal explanation, perhaps, in the 

 circumstance that the richness of the soil is combined 

 with humid geniality of the climate, never sinking 

 to the colder temperature of Tasmania, nor rising to 

 a warmth less favorable to the strong development of 

 these trees in New South Wales, nor ever reduced to 

 that comparative dryness of air which even to some 

 extent, in the mountain-ravines of South Australia, is 

 experienced. The absence of living gigantic forms of 

 animal life amidst these the hugest forms of the vege- 

 table world is all the more striking. 



Statistics of actual measurement of trees compiled 

 in various parts of the globe would be replete with 

 deep interest, not merely to science, but disclose also, 

 in copious instances, magnitudes of resources but lit- 

 tle understood up to the present day. , Not merely, 



