I think the readers of the Horticulturist should have further particulars respecting this wonderful tree, not only the " Monarch of the Californian forest" as it has been styled, but the Monarch of the vegetable kingdom. Only think of trees ninety feet in circumference and four hundred and fifty feet from the roots to the extremities of the branches!! Imagine a hollow tree that a man can enter on horseback and ride through for a space of two hundred feet, as if he were in the Thames Tunnel.

The idea of such magnitude in a tree is almost beyond comprehension, and really becomes oppressive. Nothing short of the most accurate and reliable statements which we have now had in abundance, can compel us to regard these prodigious measurements as any thing more than mere fiction.

To this add the remarkable fact, attested by various travellers and persons who reside in California and have explored the forest, that this tree occupies a circumscribed locality of some two hundred acres in extent, forming a sort of natural grove, beyond which it has nowhere been found, nor is it likely to be.

It was evidently intended to be one of the wonderful productions of nature, which like the Falls of Niagara, the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, or the Giant's Causeway on the coast of Ireland, should be remembered and spoken of to the end of time. Nothing connected with the natural history of that golden region is so well calculated to arrest the attention of the more enlightened portion of mankind than this amazing tree, and the fact that it has excited comparatively little curiosity here, only shows that our sylvan taste has not reached that degree of culture necessary to a just appreciation of the wonders and beauties of the vegetable kingdom. In Europe it has set thousands of persons in ecstacies; it has been lectured about and written about with far greater enthusiasm, than was the discovery of gold either in California or Australia. And why should it not? What is a mine of yellow metal to a grove of such trees, whose age is reckoned by the thousand years, and whose size is of almost incredible magnitude?

This great continent has been most bounteously dealt with in the distribution of sylvan treasures; look at our long list of the noblest trees in the world, more than forty species of Oak, and as many and more of Pine. As Downing once said - "What a forest of wealth compared with that of Europe!" Now to crown all comes this glorious Sequoia Wellingtonia or whatever the world may please to call it.

Ah! that Downing had but lived to record this latest and grandest discovery, in his bold and brilliant style. How his blood would have warmed with enthusiasm over such a theme, and how stirring and irresistible would have been his portraiture of this monarch of the woods!

When Dr. Lindley connected the history of the oldest Wellingtonia with some prominent historical events, he set the English lovers of trees in a frenzy. " What a tree is this!" said he, "of what portentous aspect and almost fabulous antiquity!" "They say that the specimen felled at the junction of the Stanislau and San Antonia, was above three thousand years old, that is to say it must have been a little plant when Sampson was slaying the Philistines, or Paris running away with Helen, or AEneas running away with good pater Anchises upon his filial shoulders. He closes with the emphatical remark that "it is an important acquisition;" and so to England and to all the temperate and highly cultivated parts of Europe, it is an important acquisition. Is it not important to us also? Surely it is. It may not, perchance, resist the rigors of our extreme northern winters, but over all the continent south of, say the 38° or 89° of latitude it will. It may stand at New York- The "Big Tree" grove stands at an elevation of five thousand feet above the sea level, and where they have snow for two months.

A friend who resides within two and a half miles of the grove says, the soil is a sandy loam, moderately dry, and he thinks the tree will succeed in the soil and climate of western New York. I trust it will, but taking its near relative the Sequoia (Taxodium) sempervirens as a guide, I do not entertain strong hopes. But what if it cannot be grown in New York or Pennsylvania, or in any part of New England, if it will, as it undoubtedly will, flourish in Virginia, Kentucky, and all the States south of 39°. If we fail with it in the North, our chivalrous patriotic, tasteful brethren of the sunny South, must take charge of The Big Tree. Let them plant it at once beside that loveliest of all Evergreen trees on the earth, the Magnolia grandiflora, and then they will have, side by side, the most gigantic and the most beautiful of trees - trees that in the heathen ages would have been Deified. What let me ask is to become of this grove ? Will the people of California, I mean the government, guard it against destruction? The men who flock there as to all new countries, are too eager in search of wealth to bestow any thought upon trees, and it is greatly to be feared that unless some protecting power be thrown around it, the Big Tree grove will fall beneath the ruthless hand of speculation and improvement.

What a calamity this would be! These glorious living monuments whose history dates so far back in the records of time. There are men in California however, who do appreciate these trees, and we sincerely hope they will awaken a public sentiment favorable to their preservation.

Now as to the name. I see you have adopted Lindley's view that it is a new genus, and give his title "Wellingtonia." This may be correct, but I think otherwise. There is no real ground for creating a generic distinction between this tree and the sequoia sempervirens.

It is true that they differ in foliage, that is, the foliage of a full grown S. gigantea is different from the foliage of a full grown S. sempervirens, but among the Junipers, Podocarps, and other families of Evergreens, we see differences quite as strongly marked.

Then the cones are precisely alike except in size; that of the sempervirens being about the size of a hickory nut, and that of the gigantea, as shown in your plate about the size of a pullet's egg. The cones of both have the same persistent wedge-like scales, with a transverse depression on the outside, the seeds of both are the same in number, situation, and appearance, and the trees contain the same red coloring matter which has given the name of "Red wood" to the sempervirens. For a time the absence of the male flowers prevented botanists from arriving at a complete decision; and when Dr. Lindley gave the name Wellingtonia, he had not seen them, or I believe he never would have named it a new genus.

Last February Dr. Torrey received specimens of the male flowers from California, and these enabled him at once to place it without hesitation with the sequoia; both he and Prof. Gray, are agreed in this, and these two gentlemen as you are aware, stand at the head of Botanical science in this country. I see too that M. Decaisne, M. Carriere, and several other learned botanists, and arboriculturists reject the name Wellingtonia, and adopt that of Sequoia. Let us do bo in this country. We can afford to drop the name of Wellingtonia, and especially as the truth of science demands it.