4 
206 TAXODINEZ AND ARAUCARINEZ 
‘others of the surrounding trees that we know so well 
have in the same time—namely, fifty years— 
accomplished 4th of the briefer span of life allotted 
to them on the law of averages. Our Wellingtonia 
may, then, be not inappropriately likened to a large, 
overgrown pup, disporting himself in a kennel, among 
the more symmetrical and finished forms of full-grown 
animals. Whether he grows here to anything like 
the height he attains on his native heath, or whether, 
if he does, he may not mar the proportionate effects 
of our home scenes, these are matters to be adjudged 
upon by future generations, in that indeterminate 
date called eons to come. At present it is the Silver 
Firs and a few Douglas and Sitka planted sixty and 
seventy years ago that occasionally dwarf ‘their 
surroundings, but not with any bad effect. Perhaps 
in days to come they will succumb to the superior 
height of the Sequoias. 
We must recollect, too, that the placing and 
planting of trees should always be, as far as possible, 
according to the determining agencies of the surround- 
ing circumstances. With the exception of Puzzle 
Monkeys, Wellingtonias are probably the most mis- 
placed of trees planted in the reign of Queen Victoria. 
At this present moment their unpopularity is just 
now at its meridian. When the Sequoias have out- 
grown all the improprieties of youth, when they have 
become more square-headed at their summit, when 
they have reached the dignity of old age, or, like 
Ezekiel’s Cedars, ‘when they have ‘‘ formed their 
heads among the thick branches ”’ what will be the 
view taken of them? When the grandchildren, or 
more so still, the great-great-grandchildren of those 
to-day have become, in the inevitable course of time, 
grey-headed and old, as did their forefathers before 
them, and when they come to look upon these trees 
advanced to their nearer full, what will be the view 
