Conifers 
(Peziza Willkommii) must be considered to show that 
the ground or the conditions are unsuitable for the 
trees, 
Want of light, stagnant humid air, soil which is too 
wet, too dry, or too poor, or even the attack of insects, 
bring about a depressed state of health. Larches in this 
condition will succumb or be injured for life by this 
dreaded fungus. The spores of it are carried by the wind, 
and may reach woundswhich are 60 feet above the earth.® 
But farther south, in America, there is a strangely 
isolated group of one of the oldest living conifers. On 
the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada in California, at 
heights of 5000 to 8000 feet, the big trees of Sequoia (or 
Wellingtonia) gigantea still manage to exist in spite of 
the demands of millionaires who wish to make dining- 
room tables of one cross-section of their trunks, As 
they already form the centre of a thriving tourist-industry, 
they are quite sufficiently advertised already, and it is 
unnecessary to say much about these survivals. They 
reach sometimes 320 feet in height, and may have a 
diameter of 20 feet. Some are said to have been 3300 
years old. When grown as specimens in British wood- 
lands they are not particularly beautiful, and they are not 
found to be of much importance in economic forestry. 
In South Chile and in Southern Brazil, in the district of 
San Francisco (15°—30° S, lat.), there are still left a few 
small forests of the monkey puzzle (Araucaria imbricata). 
They seem to have been surrounded and hemmed in 
by woods of a far more modern and efficient type. 
Indeed they are apparently dying out everywhere. 
This is perhaps the oldest type of tree in the world, 
as is at once impressed upon one’s mind. The branches, 
thickly covered by prickly leaves, makes one wonder 
as to what extinct animal had to be prevented from 
browsing on their foliage. But that is not all, for 
241 Q 
