162 



The Forest Trees of Wiltshire. 



further on the space of the Magazine and the patience of the 

 reader, by copying from the Illustrated News of the World, a few 

 particulars of this, the largest tree ever yet discovered. It says :— 

 " The ' Big Tree ' represented in our sketch, is 95 feet in circum- 

 ference, and 300 feet in length. The ' Three Graces/ or ' Three 

 Sisters/ also represented in the sketch, are united at the base, but 

 each has a separate trunk measuring in circumference some 92 

 feet. The ' Miner's Cabin ' has a circumference of 80 feet, while 

 its height is reckoned at 300 feet. The ' Pioneer's Cabin ' is of 

 equal dimensions. There are many other trees of similar magni- 

 tude, each of which has been named according to the fancy of the 

 emigrants. One tree with the enormous circumference of 110 feet, 

 and an elevation of 500 feet, has been called — because he is believed 

 to be the oldest tree known in the neighbourhood — ' The Father 

 of the Forest.' We also furnish our readers with an engraving 

 termed ' The Horseback Ride/ representing the hollow trunk of 

 a tree, which affords space sufficient for a man on horseback to ride 

 up the heart of the tree — so we are by our correspondent informed 

 — a distance of 75 feet." — It is scarcely necessary to state, that 

 these trees were growing in California. English readers who 

 seldom see a tree of a hundred, or much above a hundred feet 

 high, and very seldom indeed of above twenty-five or thirty feet 

 in circumference, may well be staggered on reading of these giants. 

 But accounts of them have been given by so many persons, and 

 among them by noblemen and gentlemen of the highest character, 

 who have taken California in their travels on purpose to ascertain 

 the truth of the reports they had heard, and have come away con- 

 firming them, and in some instances adding the measurement of 

 still larger ones, that it is impossible to doubt the truth of the 

 accounts quoted above. Fully believing ; nevertheless one wants 

 the evidence of one's own eyes to realise the fact. Look up at the 

 spire of Salisbury Cathedral, and then let fancy paint a tree of 

 that height with nearly another hundred feet added to it ! 

 Reason almost forbids the belief ; for reason asks how a column of 

 five hundred feet in height, and having a base of less than forty 

 feet diameter, could possibly withstand the force of the stormy 



