$0 ESSAY UPON REDWOOD. 



hill and mountain, neither drought nor flood are likely to 

 afflict the fruitful vale or rolling plain; health and plenty 

 abound. Even a small belt of a few rows of trees serve to 

 intercept malaria, when filthy fen and swamp are left undrain- 

 ed ; but cities and nations, numberless for multitude, have 

 been made a barren waste and depopulated by the removal 

 of their trees ; anon, restored by their planting, or their nat- 

 ural growth. Yet in Egypt, where no rain often falls for a 

 whole year together, Mahomet Ali, by planting trees, caused 

 an average of thirty rainy days in a year ! Our own personal 

 observations of instances, although not so historically author- 

 itative, would fill volumes. 



The preceding general remarks give us in outline, for 

 the most part, the principal characteristics of one of the 

 most wonderful, and at the same time most useful, of all the 

 timber trees of the known world. These two Scquoian Cedars 

 maritime and alpine -seem to embody, combine and con- 

 centrate more durable and available timber material to the 

 given area of land occupied, than any other genus of trees 

 hitherto discovered ; or one to two million feet to the acre. 

 Let us, then, return and review the manifold points of prac- 

 tical consideration in order more fully to confirm the truth, 

 and obtain some proximate, realizing sense of the subject. 

 We have, in some sense, seen that for health, vigor, longev- 

 ity, phoenix-like vitality of rehabilitation, and only less than 

 perpetual durability, at its best ; and, as we shall further 

 show presently, that they stand pre-eminently unrivalled. To 

 this end, we must appeal to numerous collectors of facts and 

 figures set forth by the most reliable local writers, together 



