46 TREE ANCESTORS 



three thousand year period — the thickness of the annual ring being 

 directly related to the amount of precipitation and humidity. 



Huntington, who has made climatic studies in both hemispheres 

 asserts that he can see the cause of the famine in the days of Eli- 

 jah; the good crops of Mediterranean countries at the time of 

 Christ; the long period of drought which stimulated the Arabs, 

 unified by Mohammedanism, to overrun their former limits; and 

 many other historic events of the Old World, in the climatic curve 

 made by measuring the sequoia rings. 



Year after year the sequoias have been adding layer after layer 

 to their girth in ever widening circles. The thousands of tons of 

 bark shed by each tree during its long career; the tens and hundreds 

 of thousands of tons of sap that have coursed through their vener- 

 able trunks; and the innumerable progeny of a single tree in the 

 older more propitious days — a contemplation of these questions 

 assists us in realizing the true proportions of these forest monarchs. 

 Imagination, however, falls short in its attempt to picture the ex- 

 quisite beauty of the virgin forest, standing age after age in all its 

 unsullied glory — a veritable forest primeval. 



Some of the Cahfomia trees were still in their youth and others 

 were approaching middle age when the various hordes of barbarians 

 overran Europe. They had almost reached their full growth at 

 the time of the War of the Roses and the discovery of America. 

 They had reached their present height and girth and ripe old age 

 before modern science had commenced its renaissance; in fact 

 every avenue of human endeavor^ — social, rehgious, industrial and 

 intellectual — has shown its most marvellous progress during the 

 time that it has taken the sequoias to add but a few feet to their 

 already giant frames. 



Turning now to the ancestral line of the sequoias and to the 

 more genial days of long ago when they were not restricted to a 

 small area in a single state but ranged over at least four continents, 

 it may be noted that the earliest positively identified sequoia that 

 is known was found a few years ago in the upper Jurassic of France, 

 in the deposits of which age it is represented by characteristic 

 cones. When we say that sequoias flourished in the upper Jurassic 



