38 DUDLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME 



between the new wood of the folds and the wood of the charred surface 

 underneath them, no healing at this point of contact, in the ordinary sense 

 of the word ; but there is effectual covering, or healing in the rarer sense, 

 according to the tree trunk's way. Sometimes, from the attack of insects 

 on the rapidly formed wood of the folds, these folds die. There is no 

 surgeon present to cut away this dead tissue, but the tree patiently begins 

 to form a new fold to cover the dead one. In a species with the ordinary 

 span of life the delay, this waste of effort, might be fatal to the final 

 closing of the wound. Not so with the Big Tree, to whom a score of years 

 is as one. The first fold is overtaken and passed in one case it took just 

 fifty years to do it and sooner or later the two folds from opposite sides 

 touch one another ; a few years more and the bark is pinched out, the charred 

 surface is entirely covered, and finally the annular layers become continuous 

 around the entire circumference, each resuming a normal thickness through- 

 out. The process, which has drawn on all the resources of the plant, it 

 may be for scores of years, it may be for centuries, is completed. The 

 wound is healed! This is a momentous event, yet only the spectacle of a 

 perfected cylinder with the splendid circumference of forty or sixty or 

 ninety feet, of living tissue through which the sap of the tree can pass, to 

 a considerable extent laterally as well as vertically, is the result; only con- 

 tinuous healthful growth and unbroken increase, the most inspiring of all 

 spectacles. 



In the life history of a Big Tree such injury, such prolonged but com- 

 plete and thorough repair may occur not only once but several times, and 

 yet all evidence of the various catastrophies be entirely obliterated except 

 for the thin cavities, each with one charred surface, and the peculiar struc- 

 ture of the repair layers deep within the undecayed heart of the tree. When 

 the tree of 2,171 years of age was cut, in addition to the great burn on its 

 trunk eighteen feet in width, the record of three other fires was revealed. 

 The history of the tree was as follows: 



It began its existence 271 B. C. 



At the beginning of the Christian era it was estimated to be already 

 about twelve feet in circumference just above the base. 



At 516 years of age (A. D. 245) occurred a burning three feet in 

 width on the trunk. 



One hundred and five years were occupied in healing this wound. 



One thousand, one hundred and ninety-six years without injury followed. 



At 1,712 years of age (A. D. 1441) occurred a second burning, making 

 two wounds of one and two feet each in width. Each had its own system 

 of healing. 



