THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5337, 22 March 1879, Page 2

THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA.

Professou W. H. Brewer, ot Yale College, an ominent authority on matters pertaining to the botany of California, I writes to the Neio England Jbtirnal of Education to correct some errors made by a correspondent of that paper in regard to the "Big trees of California" — errors which are constantly creeping into the papers, although they have often been re- - futed. He says :— The first error relates to their., height, the second to their age. If only the truth be told, they still remain the grandest trees on . earth, afld one of the wonders of the world. Some of the Australian Eucalyptus trees exceed them in the matter of height, yet, take them all in all and as theyi are, the giant Sequoias are the greater. Your correspondent tells of "The Father of the Forest " being " about 450 feet high when in his glory," as if this was a proved fact; rather than a vague guess. The fact is that, no one knows how high it was, for, when the grove was first discovered by white men, the prostrate tree was already partly rotten, and the whole top burned away j and accounts published 24 years ago speak of the tree as perhaps over 400 feet high when living. The State Geological Survey carefully measured all the higher standing trees iv this grove, in the Mariposa grove, and some of the trees in the other groves, and published the result years ago. In the Calavefas grove there were then 27 trees of 250 or more feet, four of which were 300 or more feet, the highest being 325 feet. Over 300 trees were measured in the Mariposa. grove, the tallest of which was 272 ft. The only tree I have seen which rivals " The Father of the Forest " in diameter is in the King's River Grove, and was less than 300 ft. hi«h. There is no evidence that "The Father of the Forest" (or any other Sequoia) ever reached 358 ft., and what its height actually was can never be known. mi „ , , , , Next as to the age. The first extended description, published in Europe 25 years aero, "estimated" the age at several thousand years, and gave wings to the imagination as to the events in the. world's history (jwhich the, old trees had seen in their lifetime. This . error has been refuted from year to year, for I know not how long, for every scientific investigation has shown its fallacy ; but the first story was so well told, and seemed so marvellous, that it is repeated by the majority of " correspondents" in some form, and I am sorry to say that clergymen and teachers are not the least common offenders, It is so much easiei;

to repeat a startling theory than it is to test its accuracy, that it is probable futuro generations of correspondents m 1970 will continue to tell how large this or 'that tree was "when Paris carried Helen from tlio walls of Troy." And so ■•♦ your correspondent speaks of one still standing as " a tree that began its growth Ion" before David reigned in Israel . r " We know the actual age of only one of the larger trees of the Calaveras grova, and that is the tree your correspondent tells us of as having been felled in 1853. That tree was sound to its centre, and we know its age to within a very few years, and it began its growth more than twenty-five hundred years after David died. It is possible that some of the oldest trees of this species may have begun their growth over '2000 yeaw ago, but not at all probable that auy reached back to within a thousand years of the me of David.

infants, great and small, while foreigners are armed by Krupp, Armstrong, and Whitworth. It is to be hoped that the competent or incompetent persons who rule English opinion are in the right, for a tiny minority requires great consciousness of rectitude to sustain it. As the position is, peaceful England swears by Freetrade, and all the rest of the world by protection ; while warlike England sticks to Woolwich and iron muzzle-loaders, and all possible allies and enemies call in to their aid breeoh'loading cannon of either ordinary or compressed steel. As Sir William Armstrong quietly remarks, the battle of the guns is not over yet. jwuumwnnrr-m