602 THE REDWOOD OP CALIFORNIA. 



cover themselves with young sprouts, like a dead trunk overgrown with 

 ivy.^ 



A redwood forest is described as grand beyond power of appraciation 

 to one who has not witnessed the dense masses of fog come rolling ia 

 from the Pacihc, creeping through the foliage, covering the hill-tops, 

 flowing down the opposite slopes, and filling the canons until hill and 

 valley are wrapped in dripping njist, or, as the process is reversed in 

 early light of morning, as these fogs melt away and reveal the forests, 

 in all their grandeur of dimensions and distance, stretching away until 

 lost to view on the far-off horizon. 



We may judge something of the requirements of the redwoods in 

 any attempt at their naturalization elsewhere by noticing the climate 

 in which they thrive. The seasons are alternately wet and dry. Eains 

 begin in October and continue to occur till May/or rarely in June. It 

 seldom rains more than three or four days at a time, and as soon as the 

 rain-fall begins the herbage starts, so that by the middle of November 

 the hills and pastures are green. December is a stormy month, with 

 some snow and ice. January is a month of flowers and the seed-time 

 of grains. Planting is done either in the fall or in January and Feb- 

 ruary, or the first days of March. February is the growing mouth, 

 like June in the Northern Atlantic States. March is a rude month, 

 with southeast storms or dry north winds. April is a' month of fluctu- 

 ating weather, of rapid growth, and the rains being well nigh over, 

 the moisture depends in part upon sea-fogs. Grain ripens in June, 

 and is harvested in July. Fogs prevail from May to August, brought 

 in the form of damp air by the trade-winds from the sea, and condensed 

 by cooling on the mountains. When the trade-winds set in a fog-bank 

 forms every day off the land, and in the afternoon it comes inland, 

 spreading over the country through the rest of the day, and nearly 

 through the night, thus repeating itself nearly every day through their 

 season. The farmers estimate these heavy fogs as about equal to a 

 light rain.2 



' Proceedings of California Academy of Natural Sciences, iii, 232. 



Dr. Gray, in an address before the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, at Dubuqno, in 1872, remarks as follows, concerning this timber: 



" The forests of California, proud as the State may be of them, are already too scanty 

 and insufficient for her uses. Two lines, such as may bo drawn with one sweep of a 

 brush over the map, -would cover them all. The coast redwood, the most important 

 tree in California, although a million times more numerous than its relative of the 

 Sierra, is too good to live long. Such is tbe value for lumber, and its accessibility, that, 

 judging the future by the past, it ia not likely, in its primitive growth, to oulast its 

 rarer fellow-species." 



■^ R. A. Thompson's History of Sonoma County, Calfornia (1877), p. 20. 



Dr. Henry N. Bolander, in a i^aper presented to the California Academy of Sciences, 

 October 16, 1865 {Proceedings iii, 232), ascribes groat importance to these fogs. In this 

 article he says : 



" Another great beneficial feature in this species {Sequoia sempervirens) is the gTea,t 

 power it possesses in condensing fogs and mists. A heavy fog is always turned into 

 rain, wetting the soil and supplying springs with water during the dry season. 

 Springs in and near the redwoods are never in want of a good supply of water, and 

 crops on the Coast Ranges are not liable to fail. The year of 1874 has proved my asser- 

 tion beyond a doubt. This fact is generally known ; a great deal of land has been taken 

 up since. It is my firm conviction that if the redwoods are destroyed — and they neces- 

 sarily will be if not protected by a wise action of our government — California will 

 become a desert in the true sense of the word. In their safety depends the future wel- 

 fare of the State. Tbey are our safeguard. It remains to be seen whether we shaU 

 be benefited or not by the horrible experience such countries as Asia Minor, Greece, 

 Spain, and France have made by having barbarously destroyed their woods and forests. 

 But with us hero it is even of a more serious nature. Wise governments would be 

 able to replace them in those countries, but no power on earth can restore the woods 

 of California when completely destroyed." 



