It is not only in tropical regions that we meet with the giants of the vegetable world. Europe possesses a few of them; isolated, it is true, but comparable in their stature to the most robust denizens of the Torrid Zone: such are the chestnut-tree of Etna, and the plane of Boudjoukdéré, near Constantinople, of which so many travellers have spoken. The remains of the virgin forests of North America also abound in species analogous to our own, and capable of attaining, with an almost incalculable longevity, truly extraordinary proportions. * * * * * The lofty table-lands of California (the Rocky Mountains) nourish an entire tribe of gigantic Coniferæ, frequently assembled in immense forests. The _Pinus Lambertiana_, the _Pinus Sabiniana_, and the _Pinus insignis_, are not less than 160 to 180 feet in height; the _Douglas Fir_ boasts of an almost equal stature, with a circumference which varies from 18 to 36 feet. Yet these colossal trees are surpassed by the _Sequoia sempervirens_, which is 240 to 260 feet high, and by the Titan of Titans, the huge _Wellingtonia gigantea_, which is also a Sequoia. I shall mention a few individuals of the latter species, whose dimensions may defy all comparison with the greatest trees of the Tropics. According to Müller, about ninety-four of these Coniferæ flourish on a plateau of the Sierra Nevada, at an altitude of 5400 feet. They are distributed in small groups over a fertile soil. The gold-seekers have named one of them the "Miner's Cabin." Its trunk, 320 feet in height, presents an excavation 16 feet in width. The "Three Sisters" are individuals springing from one root; the "Old Bachelor," stripped of its branches by successive hurricanes, stands in solitary desolation; the "Family" consists of two aged trees around which four-and-twenty scions have sprung up. The "Riding-School" is an enormous hollow trunk, prostrate on the ground, into which a man on horseback may enter as far as thirty yards. Another hollow trunk has been exhibited at San Francisco, where they have constructed out of it a saloon, adorned with tapestry and furniture, capable of accommodating forty persons. [Illustration: 1. Large-leaved Magnolia. 2. Virginian Catalpa. 3. Pinus Sabiniana.] Other resinous trees of smaller dimensions grow in the more or less humid localities of North America; such are the _Chamoecyparis Chamæcyparis sphæroidea_, which does not exceed 80 feet in height, and the Western _Thuya_ of pyramidal outline. Nor must I forget to name, among the Conifers of this continent, the Cypress of Louisiana, a tree of handsome appearance, about 100 feet high and 12 to 15 feet in circumference, which lives, it is said, 5500 to 6000 years. Its leaves are shrunken like those of the larch; and from its roots, somewhat deeply buried, spring several protuberances, or rounded conical exostoses, which sometimes grow to the height of three feet without bourgeoning.