304 THE LOG OF THE SUN 



the ground, and show, by the number 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 evolution theory 

 and writing his history of animals ; two thousand 

 years of age when Christ walked upon earth; 

 nearly four thousand years of age when the 

 * Origin of Species' w T as 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 greatest nat- 

 ural philosophers who have lived.' ' 



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 unevolved, exist- 

 ing only potentially in the scaly, reptile-like crea- 

 tures of those days, the Sequoias waved their 

 needles high in air. 



In those days these great trees were found over 

 the whole of Canada, Greenland, and Siberia, but 

 the relentless onslaught of the Ice Age wrought 

 terrible destruction and, like the giant tortoises 



