THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 537 



Yet whatever astonisliment we may feel at the extra- 

 ordmary dimensions attained by the trunks of certain 

 trees, the height to which others reach strikes us still 

 more than their growth in diameter. The king of our 

 forests, the oak, which poetic fiction looks upon as the 

 emblem of passive force, rears its crown of leaves one 

 hundred feet above the soil. 



In the East the imposing remains of the ancient forest 

 employed in building the temple of Jerusalem, the cedars 

 of Lebanon, the object of so much veneration, and which 

 the pilgrim only approaches with the sounds of a hymn 

 on his lips, spread forth their dark sheets of verdure at 

 a height of 150 feet above the mountain. 



Supported only by its flexible column, which yields and 

 bends beneath the force of the tempest, the wax-palm 

 on the Andes balances its waving crown in the bosom of 

 the clouds 200 feet above the heights whereon it grows. 



But no tree rears its head towards the sky so boldly 

 as the gigantic cedar of California, the WeUingtonia gigan- 

 lea. One colossus of this species, now hurled down and 

 stretched upon the rock, presented when it stood erect and 

 threatening a height of more than 150 metres (above 490 

 feet), that is to say, about eight times the elevation of a house 

 of five stories. It was above 130 feet in circumference. 



tains that it owes its name merely to the fact that fifty horses could be placed 

 witliin its trunk, and fifty round about it. Some botanists, however, think that 

 tliis cohjssal tree is only a fusion of several individuals of the same species. But 

 this is scarcely probable; the vicinity presents several specimens which ai-e 

 almost as vast, and which, for that reason, are known by distinct names in the 

 country. Count Borch, who has carefully examined the Hundred-horse Chestnut, 

 says that at the first look one might think it arose from the junction of several 

 trunks; but that when it is attentively studied, we find that it is onl}' one tree. 

 This fact has been placed beyond doubt by the Canon Eecupero, who had it dug 

 round, and saw that the five trunks end in one single colossal root. — Borch, 

 Lettres sur la Sicile. Turin, 1782, t. i. p. 121. 



