KEW GARDENS. 
275 
presidents of the British Ornithologists’ Union, and of the 
Zoological Society of London, would surely be a sufficient 
safeguard against abuses. I have had such a privilege grace¬ 
fully accorded to me in other countries—notably in a French 
colony, in the close season. 
With this growl I will bring my remarks to a conclusion, 
hoping I have not wearied you beyond endurance. I will end 
with expressiug my infinite regret that I have been obliged to 
figure before you at all, instead of listening to our much 
lamented President, the Lord Lilford, who cannot be present 
on account of ill-health ; who, being a Past Master in the 
science of ornithology, would no doubt have given us an 
address really worth listening to. 
ON KEW HARDENS AND SOME OF THE BOTANICAL 
STATISTICS OF THE BRITISH POSSESSIONS. 
BY J. G. BAKER, F.R.S., F.L.S. 
(Concluded from page 255.) 
Or take the history of Sequoia gigantea. (commonly known 
in English gardens as Wellingtonia gigantea), the prince of all 
the Coniferous trees, as told in a recent paper by Sir J. D. 
Hooker ( Gard . Chron., N. S., vol. x., pp. 216, 217):— 
“ The S. gigantea, or bay-tree (the Wellingtonia of British 
gardens), again, is a plant of a cooler climate [than that of 
the Californian lowlands], and hence having survived the 
glacial cold was enabled to establish itself m the Sierra 
Nevada, under certain very restricted conditions. It extends 
at intervals along the western slope of the Sierra to a little 
north and south of the parallels of 36° and 38° N., that is 
for nearly 200 miles in a north-west and south-east direction, 
at an elevation of 5,000 to 8,000 feet above the sea. Towards 
the north the trees occur as very small isolated groves of a 
few hundreds each, most of them old, and interspersed 
amongst gigantic pines, spruces, and firs, which appear as if 
encroaching upon them. Such are the groves visited by 
tourists (Calaveras, Mariposa, &c.). To the south, on the 
contrary, the Big Trees form a colossal forest, forty miles long 
and three to ten miles broad, whose continuity is broken only 
by the deep sheer-walled canons, that intersect the mountains. 
Here they displace all other trees, and rear to the sky their 
massive crowns; whilst seen from a distance, the forest 
presents the appearance of green waves of vegetation, grace¬ 
fully following the complicated topography of the ridges and 
river basins which it clothes. 
