320 Personality of Trees [THIRD WEEK 



Of all living things on earth, a tree binds us most closely 

 to the past. Some of the giant tortoises of the Galapagos 

 Islands are thought to be four hundred years old and are 

 probably the oldest animals on the earth. There is, how- 

 ever, nothing to compare with the majesty and grandeur 

 of the Sequoias the giant red-woods of California the 

 largest of which, still living, reach upward more than one 

 hundred yards above the ground, and show, by the num- 

 ber of their rings, that their life began from three to five 

 thousand years ago. Our deepest feelings of reverence are 

 aroused when we look at a tree which was " one thousand 

 years old when Homer wrote the Iliad; fifteen hundred 

 years of age when Aristotle was foreshadowing his evolu- 

 tion theory and writing his history of animals; two thou- 

 sand years of age when Christ walked upon earth; nearly 

 four thousand years of age when the l Origin of Species ' 

 was written. Thus the life of one of these trees spanned 

 the whole period before the birth of Aristotle (384 B.C.) 

 and after the death of Darwin (A.D. 1882), the two great- 

 est natural philosophers who have lived. 7 ' 



Considered not only individually, but taken as a 

 group, the Sequoias are among the oldest of the old. 

 Geologically speaking, most of the forms of life now in 

 existence are of recent origin, but a full ten million of 

 years ago these giant trees were developed almost as 

 highly as they are to-day. At the end of the coal period, 

 when the birds and mammals of to-day were as yet un- 

 evolved, existing only potentially in the scaly, reptile-like 

 creatures of those days, the Sequoias waved their needles 

 high in air. 



