have been chiefly patrolmen of private corporations installed 

 at the instigation of the Forester, patrolmen furnished by 

 townships by provision of the forest law, patrolmen retained 

 in co-operation with the Indian Department of the United 

 States and the Federal Forest Service, together with the offi- 

 cers of the National Forests, deputized as State officers to co- 

 operate with the State Service. All, by systematic arrange- 

 ment tending to efficiency in fire prevention, have been more 

 or less directly under the supervision of the State Forester 

 and the District Rangers, and responsible to them. 



A MEMBER of the faculty of Leland Stanford University, 

 in California, who is an authority on systematic botany, 

 has gathered some interesting data concerning the life 

 history of a big tree there, belonging to the sequoia gigantea 

 family, a kind of tree found nowhere but in the Pacific states. 

 The tree in question, according to the authority mentioned, 

 was 15 feet in diameter five feet from the ground and was 

 270 feet high, and its age was placed at 2,171 years. 



When felled this tree showed an enormous surface burn on 

 one side 30 feet in height and occupying some 18 feet of the 

 circumference. This was ascertained to have been due to 

 a fire that occurred in the year A. D. 1797. When cut the 

 tree had already occupied itself for something over 100 years 

 in its efforts to repair this injury, its method being the in- 

 growing of the new tissue from each margin of the great 

 black wound. When the tree was cut the records of three 

 other fires were revealed. 



Briefly summarized, the history of this tree is about as fol- 

 lows: It began its existence during the second century be- 

 fore the Christian era. During the first year of our era it 

 was about four feet in diameter about the base. When a little 

 over 500 hundred years old, about the year A. D. 245, there 



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