Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/176

 *[Footnote: trunks were often 38 to 45 English feet in girth, 6 feet above the ground: one tree was 300 English feet high, and the first 192 feet were without any division into branches.

Pinus Strobus grows in the eastern parts of the United States of North America, especially on the east of the Mississipi; but it is found again in the Rocky Mountains from the sources of the Columbia to Mount Hood, or from 43° to 54° N. lat. It is called in Europe the Weymouth Pine and in North America the White Pine: its ordinary height does not exceed 160 to 192 Eng. feet, but several trees of 250 to 266 Eng. feet have been seen in New Hampshire. (Dwight, Travels, Vol. i. p. 36; and Emerson's Report on the Trees and Shrubs growing naturally in the Forests of Massachusetts, 1846, p. 60-66.)

Sequoia gigantea (Endl.), Condylocarpus (Sal.) from New California; like Pinus trigona, about 300 English feet high.

The nature of the soil, and the circumstances of heat and moisture on which the nourishment of plants depend, no doubt influence the degree to which they flourish, and the increase in the number of individuals in a species; but the gigantic height attained by the trunks of a few among the many other nearly allied species of the same genus, depends not on soil or climate; but, in the vegetable as well as in the animal kingdom, on a specific organisation and inherent natural disposition. I will cite as the greatest contrast to the Araucaria imbricata of Chili, the Pinus Douglasii of the Columbia River, and the Sequoia gigantea of New California, which is from 245 to 300 Eng.]*