84 ESSAY UPO?: REDWOOD. 



the apothecary. Seeds, three to rive to each scale : flattened 

 oval, or obovate in outline ; the lateral wings very narrow, or 

 slightly and often obliquely margined; color, dark reddish 

 brown ; only a little notched at the outer and larger end- 

 altogether shaped like parsnip, or other similar seeds. 



Having thus far briefly sketched the general aspect, pro- 

 portions, bark, foliage, flower and fruit, here and there only 

 a general, casual allusion to color, texture and quality of tim- 

 ber, some few details and associative remarks must close the 

 natural history of this other great tree-wonder of the western 

 world. True, some of this timber is marked by bluish, iron- 

 tinted, or dark and almost black seams, with varying shaded 

 clouds that curl the glossy, highly finished surface ; but the 

 prevailing hue, as observed, is reddish in both species of Se- 

 quoia, the best proportions of which are scarcely less durable 

 than the underlying rock foundation upon which they flour- 

 ish. Vast stumps ten to twenty-five feet in diameter, often 

 twenty feet high, where the chopper's scaffold is usually con- 

 structed for the felling notch, especially where the best of 

 these abound of Humboldt, Elk and Eel sections north 

 the more immediate basal body-sweep of root-spurs of the 

 higher and dry land timber would yield an immense amount 

 of the choicest ornamental curled lumber in the world, scarcely 

 less valuable than all the other parts of the tree put together. 

 There is, therefore, more left and lost than is taken and gained 

 by present methods as will better appear further on. 



Let the reader please consider we have almost two million 

 acres of redwood soil intact, or scattered and partially de- 

 spoiled but if half or a quarter of that, what a ruin is spread 

 around and lost ! 



