6 
PINETUM BRITANNICUM. 
Fig. 19. 
Cone of S. Wellingtonia. 
Fig- 3 1 - 
Cone of S. semperuirens. 
bit as large as those which the Wellingtonia has yet borne here; and in other respects is undistinguishable 
from them. If the reader will compare fig. 19 (which we repeat from page 
, 3), which shews the young cone of Wellingtonia from trees in this country, 
with fig. 31, which represents the young cone of Sequoia semperuirens , he will 
see how little difference there is between them. 
There only remain the bark and the timber, the former of which is thicker 
and the latter lighter in the Wellingtonia than in the Sequoia semperuirens ; but 
their general character is the same, both (as pointed out by Decaisne) abound¬ 
ing in the red colouring matter soluble in water, from which the latter takes its 
vernacular name of Red Wood. We know, moreover, that the quality of timber is by no means a generic 
character in Conifers, the timber of allied species often differing very materially in character and value. 
Every ground for holding the two trees to be generally distinct has thus melted away, and nothing remains 
but candidly to acknowledge that Wellingtonia cannot be maintained as a distinbf genus. Genera, however, 
are mere artificial aids to memory, and there is nothing in nature (nor in art, except the absurdity of giving 
more names than are necessary to a species) against making every species a genus, a step which some of 
our naturalists seem by their practice rather to approve. For them Wellingtonia will stand. That, too, 
will doubtless always remain in this country the colloquial name for the tree. We shall so use it; but re¬ 
garded as a question of scientific nomenclature and natural affinity, it is, in our opinion, merely a second 
species of Seqtioia. As to its specific name gigantea , that having been already used in Sequoia by 
Endlicher for the species semperuirens , we are compelled to abandon it and to take that next in priority, 
which is Dr Seeman’s compromise, Sequoia Wellingtonia. 
Description. —The tree is one of the largest known on the face of the earth, perhaps the largest. It 
is not so thick as the Adansonia from West Africa, or as some of the Leguminosae from South America, 
nor so tall as the gum trees of Australia, some of which reach 450 feet in height. Nor does its ally, the 
Sequoia semperuirens , come far short of it in size, although it stands a little in the background. Still, the 
Wellingtonia is perhaps the most striking of them all, combining, more than any other, both enormous height 
and thickness. Its average dimensions, when full grown, are about 300 feet in height, and 90 feet in 
girth at the base. The dimensions of one of the fallen trees, whose top had been broken off, is estimated at 
425 feet if the top had remained. Lord Richard Grosvenor (“ Gardeners’ Chronicle,” 7th January i860) 
speaks of one he had seen as being 450 feet high and 116 feet in circumference : a height taller than St 
Peter’s, at Rome, and little short of that of the Pyramids. Mercantile men may bring home to their minds 
the enormous size of these trees in another way, viz., that used by Messrs Sang, who calculate the quantity 
of wood in a tree, and its price at a penny per foot of inch deal, which gives the astounding result of £>6250 
as the value of a single tree. Although this is a good mode of shewing the enormous quantity of timber in 
one of those trees, it would not do for practical calculations of its value; for, as we shall presently see, the 
timber, instead of producing a penny per foot, is worthless for any purpose yet known, and it would pro¬ 
bably, therefore, bring no return at all. 
The bark of a portion of the trunk of a large tree, known as the “ Mother of the Forest,” which has 
been erebled in its natural position in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, has doubtless given many of our 
readers the opportunity of forming for themselves some faint idea of the size of the tree. It is 93 feet in cir¬ 
cumference at the base, 116 feet in height, and at the top is still about 45 feet in circumference. The tree 
from which it was taken was 363 feet in height. The American statement of the contents of that tree is, 
that it contained 600,000 feet of timber, that the weight of the trunk alone was upwards of 3,000,000 
lbs., or more than 1700 tons (a large clipper-ship load). We need not follow them into their calculations 
of how many houses of comfortable dimensions a tree would build (240 we think it is), how many people 
could find shelter in the circumference of its trunk; nor narrate how, while it was exhibited in California, 
a pianoforte was placed by the American exhibitor within the circle of the bark, and quadrilles danced' 
in 
