50 CLIMATIC CYCLES AND TREE-GROWTH. 



belonging to the group. But if other samples are taken in future years, 

 this numbering will prevent confusion. All the 23 stumps are thus 

 identified by a number in this series. 



I had hoped on this trip to find other trees as old as Huntington's 

 three, and therefore searched carefully for the largest stumps. All 

 those over 20 feet in diameter and a number of less size were estimated 

 for age. This was done by measuring the average width of rings here 

 and there along a radius and multiplying by the length of the radius. 

 About 50 were thus tested. In many cases the result has proved to be 

 within 50 years and sometimes much closer, but these estimations 

 were not very reliable, there being several large mistakes in them. In 

 attempting to pick out the oldest stumps among several thousand 

 without spending much time or getting very far from camp, it is impos- 

 sible to make these estimates with very great care. It was felt that 

 much help would have been obtained from a small range-finder and 

 telescope, the former to give the distance of the stump and the latter 

 its diameter. In the course of a few days this would have saved many 

 miles of tramping and the oldest trees would have been found more 

 readily. 



On the steep upland slopes above Camp 6, two trees were estimated 

 at about 2,500 years in age. These were afterwards numbered D 18 

 and D 19. D 18 was an immense tree which was cut down in 1914 at 

 the time a motion-picture company was operating in the sequoia forest. 

 It is referred to by the lumbermen as the "Moving Picture Tree." 

 It had to be blasted from the stump before it fell, and the stump was so 

 completely shattered that no sample could be cut from it. In falling, 

 the trunk of the tree split in halves through a large part of its length, 

 and most of it remains where it fell. About 40 feet of logs were cut 

 away between the ruins of the stump and the rest of the tree. Accord- 

 ingly my sample was cut from the lower end of the broken top and at a 

 point which had been about 50 feet above the ground. 



Close by the location of No. 18, and on the steep upper hillside just 

 below the track which extends on to Camp 7, is No. 19. A log from it 

 rests uphill with its upper end at the railroad embankment. The 

 section was taken from the stump nearly 60 feet below (see plate 5). 

 Camp 7 was visited and used as a base for two days. It is 2 miles 

 beyond Camp 6 on the ridge at the farther side of Windy Gulch. There 

 are some very fine stumps close to the road that goes down from the 

 camp into the basin, which were estimated to be 2,300 or 2, 400 years old. 



No. 16 was found high up in the gulch that extends toward the top 

 of the mountain just south of the camp. The gulch faces toward the 

 east and at the location of the tree has a slope of 15. No. 17 comes 

 from the basin some hundreds of feet below the camp. It was a wind- 

 fall and the lumberman thought it might have been lying there a great 

 many years. As it was a very large tree and of slow growth, it was 



