WELLINGTON!! GIGANTEA. 209' 



to emulate the size, they wholly overpower the Sequoias in numbers. 

 The force of numbers eventually wins. At least in the commonly 

 Visited groves, Sequoia gigantea is invested in its last stronghold ; it 

 can neither advance into more exposed positions above, nor fall back 

 into drier and barer ground below, nor hold its own in the long run 

 where it is, under present conditions ; and a little further drying of 

 the climate, which must have been much moister than now, would 

 precipitate its doom. Seedlings of the big trees occur, not rarely 

 indeed, but in small proportion to those of the associated trees ; and 

 small indeed is the chance that any of these will attain to the days 

 of the years of their fathers."* 



The earliest reports of the extraordinary bulk of the " Big Trees," 

 although much in excess of the reality, tended greatly to excite public 

 interest in them, which can scarcely be said to have been diminished 

 by the more accurate information respecting their dimensions subse- 

 quently received. Actual measurement made by authority of the United 

 States Government, of the largest "Wellingtonias standing in the groves 

 of the Sierra Nevada, showed the tallest of them to be 325 feet in 

 height, and 45 feet in circumference at 10 feet from the ground. 

 There are but three others whose heights exceed 300 feet, the cir- 

 cumference of one of them, called "The Mother of the Forest," being 

 as much as 61 feet at 10 feet from the ground, t The heights of 

 the next six tallest range from 284 to 272 feet, and their circum- 

 ferences from 49 to 41 feet. These ten trees are all in the Calaveras 

 Grove, at the northern limit of the -tree. No tree yet observed in 

 any of the other groves has attained so great a height as these, and 

 generally speaking, . the height appears to diminish in proceeding from 

 north to south, or inversely, to the elevation at which they are 

 growing. The tallest tree in the Mariposa Grove was found by 

 measurement to be 272 feet high ; and the heights of the next six 

 tallest ranged between 271 and 250 feet, with circumferences, at 10 

 feet from the ground, of from 60 to 40 feet. \ The largest known 

 Wellingtonia is prostrate ; it is called by the settlers around the 

 Calaveras Grove " The Father of the Forest," and its height, when 

 standing, could not have been less than 350 feet. 



The immense size of the trees naturally led to conjectures as to the 

 ages of some of the " full grown . giants," but which, in the first 

 instances, were enormously in excess of the reality. The earliest 



* Professor Asa Gray, Address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 1872. Professor Whitney has pointed out another cause which has hastened the extinction 

 of the Wellingtonia in its native home : — "The ravages of the forest fires have been most 

 destructive ; the light wood is rapidly consumed, although the bark appears to have some power 

 of resistance. 



+ It was the bark of this tree, stripped off to 116 feet of its height, that was brought to 

 England for exhibition, and set up in the Crystal Palace, at Sydenham, where it remained 

 till it was totally destroyed by the disastrous fire of December 30, 1866. 



t Professor Whitney, The Yosemite Book, 



P 



