SEPTUAGINT 



Thirty days hath September, 

 April, June and November. 



5309 



SEQUOIA 



Many of the months have undergone changes 

 in their number of days, but September has 

 always had thirty days since old Roman times. 

 It has not always been, however, as it is to- 

 day, the ninth month. Before the calendar was 

 revised by Julius Caesar it was the seventh 

 month, and its name is from the Latin septem, 

 meaning seven; for when the month was shifted 

 in the Julian calendar to the ninth place in the 

 year, its name was not changed. 



The only holiday that falls in September is 

 Labor Day, which in all the Canadian prov- 

 inces and most of the states of the American 

 Union is celebrated on the first Monday in the 

 month. See LABOR DAY. 



SEPTUAGINT, sep'tuajint, the oldest 

 Greek translation of the Old Testament. It 

 is supposed that it was begun in the third cen- 

 tury, B.C., in Alexandria, Egypt. It was com- 

 pleted before the Christian Era, and had an 

 important influence in the preparation of the 

 world for Christianity as well as in spreading it 

 in the period of the early Church. Its oldest 

 existing manuscripts, the Vatican and the Si- 

 naitic copies, are still much used by scholars in 

 the comparison of texts. The name, meaning 

 according to the seventy, refers to an early be- 

 lief that the translation was made in seventy- 

 two days by seventy-two scholars brought by 

 Ptolemy Philadelphus from Jerusalem. It is 

 commonly indicated by the Roman numerals, 

 LXX. See BIBLE. 



SEQUOIA, se kwoi'a, a genus of cone-bear- 

 ing trees famed for their gigantic size and their 

 great age. Two species, both native to Cali- 

 fornia, are found the so-called big tree, or 

 giant sequoia, and the redwood, or evergreen 

 sequoia. Both species have been successfully 

 introduced into European gardens by the plant- 

 ing of seedlings. 



Big Trees. These giant trees are probably 

 the oldest living things on the globe. Some of 

 the patriarchs of the group must, have been 

 aged trees when the Pyramids of Egypt were 

 being built, for, according to David Starr Jor- 

 dan, the largest specimens may be seventy cen- 

 turies old. A tree of average size, twenty-three 

 feet in diameter, was felled, and its annual 

 rings were counted; it was found to be about 

 2,125 years old. The descriptions of the largest 

 specimens, most of which have been given spe- 

 cial names, seem unbelievable to one who has 

 never seen a big tree. "General Sherman" (see 

 illustration on page 1059) has so huge a girth 



that it requires twenty men to encircle its 

 trunk; the "Keystone State" is 325 feet in 

 height; and the "Empire State" is ninety-four 

 feet in circumference. The "Grizzly Giant," 

 so-called because of its battered appearance, has 

 several branches each of which is six feet in 

 diameter. Through the hollowed trunks of 

 some of the fallen trees two men may ride 

 abreast on horseback, and another specimen, 

 standing square across a roadway, has been cut 

 through at the base and transformed into an 

 archway through which a coach and four can 

 easily pass. A dancing pavilion has been made 

 by polishing the surface of the stump of one 

 gigantic specimen, doubtless the only ballroom 

 of its kind in the world. One traveler in the 

 West tells of a tree having a great hollow burnt 

 in it probably the work of Indians and in the 

 space the six ponies and mules of the com- 

 pany were stabled. Yet so great was the vi- 

 tality of this forest monarch that far above 

 its foliage showed green and fresh against the 

 sky. 



The big trees, which are found only on the 

 western slopes of the Sierra Nevada range, grow 

 at altitudes of from 5,000 to 7,000 feet, and oc- 



THE SEQUOIA 



cur in scattered groves in the central part of 

 California. One of the finest and best known 

 groves, the Mariposa, is now a part of Yosemite 

 National Park (which see). Other well-known 

 groves are the Calaveras, Stanislaus, Fresno, 

 Merced and Tuolomne. Over a million giant 

 trees, having General Sherman as their chief, 

 are contained in Sequoia National Park (see 

 subhead under PARKS, NATIONAL). 



The trunks grow straight and gradually taper, 

 and the branches begin to appear about half or 

 two-thirds of the distance to the top. The 

 soft, coarse-grained wood is red in the center, 

 but that containing the sap is white. So dur- 



