Of late, says Curtis' Botanical Magazine, the curiosity of the public, as well as of the Botanist, has been excited by a discovery of Mr. William Lobb, of a coniferous tree in the interior of California of a most gigantic size, measuring three hundred feet and more in height, and from ten to twenty feet in the diameter (thirty or sixty feet in circumference) of its trunk. Douglass' Pinus Lambertiana of the Oregon measured two-thirds of that height, and he described a species of Taxodium two hundred and seventy feet long, and thirty-two feet round at three feet above the ground. Some few he saw three hundred feet high.

Happily Mr. Lobb sent home branches of his gigantic Conifer, bearing foliage and cones, together with the following account of it, which appeared in the Gardener' Chronicle and Curtis' Magazine; a drawing forms the subject of the present illustration of the Horticulturist.

Mr. Lobb says, " This magnificent tree, from its extraordinary height and large dimensions, may be termed the monarch of the California forest. It inhabits a solitary district on the elevated slopes of the Sierra Nevada, near the head-waters of the Stanislau and San Antonio rivers, in latitude 38° N., longitude 129° W., at an elevation of five thousand feet from the level of the sea. From eighty to ninety trees exist, all within the circuit of a mile; and these varying from two hundred and fifty to three hundred and twenty feet in height, and from ten to twenty feet in the diameter of the trunk. Their manner of growth is much like that of the Se-quoih (Taxodium) Sempervirens; some are solitary, some are in pairs, and not unfrequently stand three or four together. A tree recently felled measured about three hundred feet in length, with a diameter, including bark, twenty-nine feet two inches at five feet from the ground. The bark is of a pale cinnamon color, and from twelve to fifteen inches in thickness. The branchlets are round, somewhat pendent, and resembling a Cypress or Juniper. The leaves are pale grass-green; those of the young trees are spreading, with a sharp acuminate point. The cones are about two and a half inches long, and two inches across the thickest part.

The trunk of the tree in question was perfectly solid from the sap-wood to the centre, and, judging by the number of eccentric rings, its age has been estimated at three thousand years. The wood is light, soft, and of a reddish color, like Redwood (or Taxodium Sempervirens).99

* See Frontispiece.

Of this vegetable monster, a section was exhibited at Philadelphia about two years since. Dr. Lindley says, " It must have been a little plant when Sampson was slaying his Philistines, or Paris running away with Helen, or AEneas carrying off good Pater Anchises on his filial shoulders/' Some seeds kindly sent to us, and planted in the green-house, have unfortunately not vegetated; but several individuals have been more fortunate, and plants may now be bought in the United States,* where they will no doubt become as common as Deodars. Dr. Lindley has determined that the tree belongs to a perfectly new genus, with foliage not very dissimilar to that of the Juniper's, yet with true cones, or stroboli, as large as those of the Scotch Fir, but in structure very much resembling those of the Japan genus Scia-dopitw of Siebold and Zuccari, Flora of Japan, ii. p. 1.t. 102, - which, however, has leaves the longest (four or five inches long, and the broadest more than a line in width,) of any genus in the northern hemisphere; and so arranged in whorls that each whorl is umbraculate, whence the generic name.