THE SEQUOIAS 265 



spruce, seem not to court the lightning flash as the lower, 

 pointed trunks do; and yet no aged sequoia can be found 

 whose head has not suffered losses by Jove's thunder- 

 bolts. Cheerfully the tree lets go a fraction of its mighty 

 top, and sets about the repair of the damage, with greatly 

 accelerated energy, as if here was an opportunity to expend 

 the tree's pent-up vitality. It is strange to see horizontal 

 branches of great age and size strike upward to form a part 

 of a new, symmetrical dome to replace the head struck off 

 or mangled by lightning. With all the signs of damage 

 lightning has done to these tree giants of the Sierras, but 

 one instance of outright killing of a tree is on record. 



The wood of the Big Tree is red and soft, coarse, light, 

 and weak — unfit for must lumber uses. It ought, by all 

 ordinary standards, to be counted scarcely worth the cut- 

 ting; but the vast quantity yielded by a single tree pays the 

 lumberman huge profits, though he wastes thousands of 

 feet by blasting the mighty shaft into chunks manageable 

 in the sawmill. Shingles, shakes, and fencing consume 

 more of the lumber than general construction — ignoble 

 uses for this noblest of all trees. 



The best groves of Big Trees now under government pro- 

 tection are in the grand Sequoia National Park. Near the 

 Yosemite is the famous Mariposa Grove that contains the 

 ** grizzly giant" and other specimen trees of great age and 

 size. More than half of the Big Trees are in the hands of 

 speculators and lumber companies. Exploitation of 

 nature's best treasure is as old as the human race. The 

 idea of conservation is still in its infancy. 



The ruin by the lumbering interests of a sequoia grove 

 means the drying up of streams and the defeat of irrigation 

 projects in the valleys below. Big Trees inhabit only areas 



