ESSAY UPON REDWOOD. 93 



or sinkers, which are rejected, and left with stumps and tops 

 on the land. Also, for obvious reasons, the reader will readi- 

 ly understand that where private interests lie in the line 

 of concealment from the public, on account of combina- 

 tions, those ostensible figures given are rather more liable to 

 be under than over the actual truth. 



Trees exhumed from dry gravel, and sandy or loamy 

 soils, or washed out in the ever-deepening valley drains of the 

 hillsides of the peninsula around San Francisco caused by 

 dismantling the hills of their rain-detaining trees, shrubbery, 

 etc. these fallen trees, as observed, have been frequently 

 found perfectly sound after untold ages. Indeed, nothing is 

 more common than to find enormous prostrate trees under the 

 most damp and trying conditions of our foggy-coast forests. 

 Writers give unnumbered examples like that reported in a 

 recent number of the "Rural Press," briefly: 



"F. R. and A. J. Hooper, of Trinidad, in 1852, 

 whilst building a railroad, were obliged to fell a red- 

 wood tree one hundred and fifty feet high by ten feet 

 in diameter, which had grown from seed fallen upon the 

 top of an ancient ancestor. Roots ten inches in diameter 

 had grown, overspanning the fallen tree, which was still 

 sound, and furnished stringers for a trestle." Yet in similar 

 conditions of the self-same forest, some firs and oaks rot into 

 fragile masses, that will crush and fall away beneath your feet, 

 in five or six years. In both species of these reverend cedars 

 we see immense old heart-logs spanned by the roots of living 

 trees trees of centuries agone ; and yet even now they afford 

 the most select and choice lumber to be found. We say 



