Pinus lambertiana (Dougl.), in North-west America, 224-235 English feet.
Araucaria excelsa (R. Brown), the Cupressus columnaris of Forster, in Norfolk Island and the surrounding rocky islets, 181-224 English feet. The six species of Araucaria 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 57½ 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 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. feet in height,—not a plant taken from among a vegetation stunted by cold either of latitude or elevation, as is the case with the small Willow-tree, two inches in height, (Salix arctica),—but a small phænogamous plant belonging to the fine climate of the southern tropic in the Brazilian province of Goyaz. The moss-like Tristicha hypnoïdes, from the monocotyledonous family of the Podostemeæ, hardly reaches the height of 3 lines (27⁄100ths, or less than three-tenths of an English inch.) “En traversant le Rio Claro dans la Province de Goyaz,” says an excellent observer, Auguste de St.-Hilaire, “j’aperçus sur une pierre une plante dont la tige n’avoit pas plus de trois lignes de haut et que je pris d’abord pour une mousse. C’étoit cependant une plante phanérogame, le Tristicha hypnoïdes, pourvue d’organes sexuels comme nos chênes et les arbres gigantesques qui à l’entour élevaient leur cimes majestueuses.” (Auguste de St.-Hilaire, Morphologie Végétale, 1840, p. 98.)