Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/175

 *[Footnote: which have become known to us hitherto, fall, according to Endlicher, into two groups:

a. The American group (Brazil and Chili): A. brasiliensis (Rich.), between 15° and 25° 8. lat.; and A. imbricata (Pavon), between 35° and 50° S. lat., the latter growing to 234-260 English feet.

b. The Australian group: A. bidwilli (Hook.) and A. cunninghami (Ait.) on the east side of New Holland; A. excelsa on Norfolk Island, and A. cookii (R. Brown) in New Caledonia. Corda, Presl. Göppert, and Endlicher, have already discovered five species of Araucarias belonging to the ancient world in the lias, in chalk, and in beds of lignite (Endlicher, Coniferæ fossiles, p. 301.).

Pinus Douglasii (Sabine), in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains and on the banks of the Columbia River (north lat. 48°-52°). The meritorious Scotch botanist from whom this tree is named perished in 1833 by a dreadful death in collecting plants in the Sandwich Islands, where he had arrived from New California. He fell inadvertently into a pit in which a fierce bull belonging to the cattle which have become wild had previously fallen, and was gored and trampled to death. By exact measurement a stem of Pinus Douglasii was 57-1/2 English feet in girth at 3 feet above the ground, and its height was 245 English feet. (See Journal of the Royal Institution, 1826, p. 325.)

Pinus trigona (Rafinesque), on the western declivity of the Rocky Mountains, described in Lewis and Clarke's Travels to the Source of the Missouri River and across the American Continent to the Pacific Ocean (1804-1806), 1814, p. 456. This gigantic Fir was measured with great care; the]*