To the Editor of this magazine, one of the most interesting lessons learned in California, was one which only one experienced in the culture of trees could learn; namely, that the Sequoia gigantea is by nature a swamp tree. The places where they grow now are comparatively dry; but two or three thousand years ago they followed the track of receding glaciers, and they received the melting snows from the tops of mountains that have no summer snows now. The ground on which these mammoth trees stand, once very wet or even swampy, has become drier through the long ages. Horticulturists know that swamp trees generally grow very well in ground that is comparatively dry, but seeds of such trees will not sprout in anything but the moist, oozy moss on the top of a swamp or damp ground. Hence, the only young trees we find in the mammoth tree locations, are where a chance seed happens to fall on a moist rock, or other damp situation. Young trees are common only in one location where clouds condense against a mountain side and the whole situation abounds with springs and oozy spots. Here in the east hundreds of trees have been planted during the past quarter of a century, but rarely has one lived more than a few years. They do not mind the winters.

We have known them stand 200 below zero uninjured, but some fungus, favored by a dry atmosphere, carries them off gradually during the summer season.

Profiting by these facts, the writer brought three strong plants from California and set them in a swamp. Usually when we set swamp trees in a swamp, they will not grow unless they are suffered to grow into the swamp themselves. We make a mound and plant them in the mound, from whence they root down as suits themselves. These three plants have had two winters and one summer; the past winter being a terribly severe one. To-day they look perfectly sound and flourishing, and the Editor believes that he has at last discovered how to make the great tree of California thrive in eastern gardens.