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 sempervirens, 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 sempervirens; but
their general character is the same, both (as pointed out by Decaisne) abounding
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 veiy materially in chara&er 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 distinct 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 regarded
as a question of scientific nomenclature and natural affinity, it is, in our opinion, merely a second
species of Sequoia. As to its specific name gigantea, that having been already used in Sequoia by
Endlicher for the species sempervirens, 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 Leguminosa: 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 sempervirens, 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
""irth 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 sec, the
timber, instead of producing a penny per foot, is worthless for any purpose yet known, and it would probably,
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 erected 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 circumference
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 danccd