(jinadidii Foicsiiij Journal, Scplcnibcr, 1917 



Four-Thousand-Year-Old Sequoias 



By Ernest G. Dudley 



Giants of California That Knew This 

 World Ages Before Julius Caesar. 



128.^ 



Thousands of tourists gaze at the 

 "big trees" of the Sierra, with un- 

 seeing eyes, and then, content that 

 they have seen all there is to see and 

 know all there is to know, return 

 home. 



Alas, — if the Forester only knew 

 as much as they! 



The poet, as he watches the last 

 dying glow of a California sunset 

 enhance the already inconceivably 

 rich coloring of an ancient Sequoia, 

 murmurs to himself "deepening shad- 

 ows," "forest dells," and "patriarchs 

 of the forest." Artists vie with each 

 other in their efforts to paint them 

 and think of the colors, — reds, browns 

 purples, and greens, and feel the soft 

 elusive haze which their brushes can- 

 not reproduce. 



Scientists, with minds intent on 

 prehistoric geologic history, topo- 

 graphy, and the dynamic changes in 

 earth's crust and climate which des- 

 troyed great forests of big trees, only 

 to leave a few relics of past ages for 

 man to wonder at, gaze with admira- 

 tion on their beauty and vitality. 

 All in their turn pay homage to the 

 largest, oldest, and grandest tree 

 that nature ever produced. 



And the forester — perhaps a poet 

 and a scientist at heart, works among 

 them. Sunrises and sunsets he has 

 seen of which the artist has only 

 dreamed. He has heard the! soft 

 murmur of breezes mid their tops, 

 high up in the clear blue California 

 sky, and again the crash and roar of 

 the storm king, which with inexorable 

 fury, strives, as he has striven thou- 

 sands of times before, to uproot and 

 cast them to earth. He has mar- 

 veled at their power of resistance, 

 and with awe and wonderment, has 

 seen one of them give up the fight 

 on a calm and peaceful afternoon 

 and crash to earth while trees merely 

 nodded their heads as if in recognition 



of the passing of one of their lifelong 

 associates. Thus the forester sees 

 them, and seeing them thus, bends 

 his energy the more to protecting 

 and insuring their future. 



The Relics of The Past 



To do this he studies their past and 

 their present. Geologists tell him 

 that ages and ages ago whole forests 

 of Sequoias abounded on the North- 

 ern Hemisphere. Fossil remains in 

 Greenland, Spitzbergen, and the Un- 

 ited States prove this. 



Before the glacial periods, and 

 there were no doubt several such ice 

 ages, great forests of luxuriant vege- 

 tation were in existence. To-day 

 only the Sequoia and the Bald Cy- 

 press of the Southern States (Taxod- 

 ium) remains of this almost extinct 

 vegetation. 



AH the more interesting is the fact 

 that the two Sequoias, the coast red- 

 wood and the big-tree are found only 

 in California and w^ithin so limited 

 a range. 



We knoW' that glacial action in 

 California was restricted to the crests 

 of the Sierras and that the ice bodies 

 moved, but here and there, under 

 some protecting ridge, a Sequoia, or 

 perhaps only the seeds of Sequoia 

 were left, and as the ice melted these 

 formed the nuclei of the present 

 groves. Then followed years of tor- 

 rential rains which made canyons, 

 valleys, and plains. 



5,000 Years' Growth 



The forester is, of course, in- 

 terested in the size and age of 

 these trees. The General Sher- 

 man, a tree in the Giant Forest, 

 is 28 feet in diameter and 280 

 feet high. It is no doubt be- 

 tween 4,000 and 5,000 years 

 old, although ring counts on the 

 stumps of trees felled in logging 



