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Show THE WONDERS OF CALIFORNIA. 145 The trees are mammoth redwoods, assigned by botanists to a class known as Sequoia gigantea. In an elaborate description written soon after discovery, a patriotic English scien-tist christened them the Wellingionia gi-gantea. This roused the jealous ire of a California savan, who, in a ludicrous spasm of national pride, gave them the specific title of Washingtonia gigantea. But by common consent they are now known by the name first mentioned. Like all other timber of the Taxodium genus, they are but little subject to de-cay, and the most impaired of the fallen trunks has undoubtedly been prostrate ' for many hundred years. In this dry air, at an elevation of 3,000 feet above sea- level, with drought in summer and snow in winter, and only the light rains of spring and autumn, decay requires long periods, compared to which a human life seems practically naught. We have gazed long upon these bo-tanic marvels, and still new beauties ap-pear at each new study ; but it is when we come to estimate their age that amaze-ment reaches its climax, and we can truly compare the duration of these monstrous trunks with man's brief period of growth and decay. The trees of this genus require twenty years to increase one inch in diameter ; the bark twice as long to gain the thickness of a knife- blade; the timber, in a drying air, will jiot perceptibly decay within the life- time of man. By these and many other signs, more than all by the number of annular rings, it is demonstrated that the largest of the Sequoias must be 3,000 years A MONSTER. |