4. The Mariposa Grove is the one best known to English travellers, and is usually visited from Clark’s ranch on the road to the Yosemite Valley. It consists of two nearly distinct groves, the upper one being compact, on an area of 3700 by 2300 feet and containing 365 trees over 1 foot in diameter, besides a great number of small ones. The southern division or lower grove is said to contain only half as many Sequoias, and these are more mixed with other trees, such as Douglas fir, sugar pine (Pinus Lambertiana), Abies concolor, and Libocedrus decurrens. Many of the trees in both of them have been much injured by fire, which has destroyed many of the younger ones within the groves; but there are on the outskirts several small natural groups of young trees up to 6 or 8 inches in diameter. The largest tree here is the “ Grizzly Giant,” whose photograph is well known in many English houses, and which is 93 feet in girth at the ground, and 64 feet at eleven feet up; some of its branches are fully 6 feet in diameter. The tallest tree in this grove, according to Whitney, is 272 feet, and another is 270 feet by 26 feet in diameter at the base; only six in all are over 250 feet high.
5. The Fresno Grove is about 14 miles south-east of Clark’s ranch, and is about 24 miles long by 1 to 2 miles wide. It contains 500 to 600 trees, of which the largest is 81 feet in girth at 3 feet from the ground.
6. About 50 miles south-east of the Fresno Grove, along the slope of the sierra between the King’s and Kaweah rivers, is by far the most extensive forest that has been found. It is about 30 miles north-east of Visalia, and is scattered over an area 8 to 10 miles long and 4 to 5 wide, at an elevation of about 4500 to 7000 feet. The average size of these trees is much smaller, only 10 to 12 feet in diameter, the largest measured, near Thomas's Mill, being 106 feet in girth near the ground, where a considerable portion has been burnt off. At 12 feet from the ground this tree was 75 feet in girth, its height being 276 feet, though the top was dead.
7. There are two other groves on the Tule river, of which the most northerly is 30 miles from the King’s River Grove. These were discovered in 1867 by Mr. D’Heureuse when exploring for the Geological Survey. They extend over an area of several square miles and contain a considerable number of trees, of which no measurements are given.
8. Besides these there are small and little known groves on Dinkey Creek, a tributary of King’s river, and on the headwaters of the Merced river, the last said to contain less than 100 trees.
Prof. W.L. Jepson of the University of California has been good enough to send us the following enumeration? of the existing groves of Wellingtonia, most of which he has visited this year :—
1 This list will be published in Prof. Jepson’s forthcoming work on the Trees of California.
