The Warner weekly sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1885, 1885-09-04
SOME FAMOUS BIG TREES.
Australian Giants overtop those OF Cali
fOrnia.

cZ llCAC - VA RAttAAS AAhCt
said a botanist, holding a microscopic
slide in one hand and a picture of a
great tree in the other. 'aThis is ada
tom, one of the smallest vegetable or
ganisms, invisible to the naked eye,
while this" hourishing the picture, 'is
the largest tree as to height in the
world
zone of the sequoias?"
no" was the reply. "Uncle Sam
has done pretty well with trees, but
when it zones to height the British
Lion takes the belt, as the Hottest
trees are found in the Australian do
minion. This picture is a photograph
of one found by a traveller In the Black
range of Berwick, and it is estimated
at 500 feet from the groundto thetop-
most branch. Think oft a moment
continued the speaker. 'Five hum
dred feet means a gooddeal. 1t would
dwarf the Bartholdi statue. Trinity
would look like q telegraph pole COM
pared to it; the Brooklyn bridge would
be nowhere; Strasburg Cathedral, the
highest building on the globe, would
be fifty-four feet below the birds nests
on the top branches, and, if the giant
was placed by the side of the
pyrimid of Cheops, the leaves of the
eucalyptus would still be TWEEN
ty feet above it. That's the
kind of trees they have in Australia,
and they are undoubtedly the largest
on the globe, though it is claimed
that the California specimens are
impressive from theirgreat bulk. The
gum trees, as the Australian giants
are called, are a comparatively mod
ern discovery, and for a long time it
was impossible to approach them, but
now roads are broken, and travellers
can ride directly to the foot of several.
One ofthe first known, a Kan4ieucalyp-
tus Eucalyptus colossea) ofbotanists,
was discovered in a glen of the Warren
river, Western Australia. Whenfound
by a party of riders, 1t was PROSTATE
upon the ground and four riders
abreast entered the trunk, that was
estimated at 400 feet in length. An
other species f. Amzgdalina, measur-
ed by Boyle in the gloomy forest of
Daudenong, was found to be 420 feet
long, while another, now growing on
the Black Spur, ten miles from Heales-
vile, is 480 feet high. These meas
urements, you see, are far ahead ofthe
California trees, one of the largest,
| that | think is known as The Father
of the Forest only measuring 435 feet,
and being Ito feet in circumference at
the base. The one called The Moth
er of the Forest measures $50 in
| height, with a circumference at the
base of 90 feet. Ween they felled the
| famous Traveller in 1858, and, blythe
way, every man that had a hand in it
ought to have been sent to Dry Tor
| tugas, it took FIVE or six men nearly a
month to bring it to the ground, and
| they had all kinds of tools to work
with, pump augurs, wedges, andevery-
thing you couldthink OF.
For a good many years the trees
were subjected to all kinds of indigni-
ties, and / have a list of over thirty
names of so-called civilized human be-
ings that / copied from the bark where
they had been carved. Nearly every
body feels called upon to do this; but
the rest, who have no knife or ne too
lazy, have contented themselves with
| building fires around theroots. Why
| continued the excited botanist, nupon
my word / would as soon think of
| carving my name on my g~reat7grand-
fathers back, or of burning my grand
mother at the stake, as harming these
trees.
"Can the age Of these large trees be
| determined?" asked the writer.
mot to a certainty was the reply.
"In those extremely old fellows the
lines are not easily determined, but if
you want a. guess, 4 should say that,
when King David was f1ourishing, the
seeds ofthesegiants were sprouting. In
| one that / have examined, two thou
sand annual rings could easily be
counted, but around the SO -called heart
of the tree they multiplied so rapidly
that it was impossible to count them;
but it was very evident that some OF
the trees were much older than the
earth in which they grew, that is, pre-.
supposing that we 60 by Biblical time.
In short, the trees may be all the way
from two to ten thousand years old.
That this is not q wild statement you
can see by taking the case of the great
tree known as the Dragons Blood
of the Canary Islands. Some one had
the curiosity to hunt up the history
of it, and foumdth descriptions oft,
written several hundred years ago,
agreed exactly with those Of to-day;
so that say in threehundred years the
tree has not changed at all in general
appearance. The legends Of the ma
tives say that the tree was w~orshiped
by the original inhabitants. In the
fifteenth century the Roman Catho-
lie priest stationed there used it's hol-
low, or partly hollow, trunk as a
room in which to say mass, and the
ruins of the altar ear be seen to-day.
1t was discovered, or revealed TO sci.
ence, so to speak, in the days when
the father Of Columbus was a child, OF