FOREST SOCIETIES. 



539 



ure conditions are better, it attains a height of 3 50 feet by 20 feet in 

 diameter. When the tree has reached the age of 500 years it 

 usually begins to fall off in growth and die downward from the 

 top. The oldest redwood found by the investigations of the 

 United States Forestry Division in 1899 and 1900 was 1373 

 years old. Lumbering the redwood is now confined to the 

 northern counties in California; the stands in Santa Cruz are 



Fig. 4986. 



Mature forest of redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). (Bureau of Forestry, U. S. 

 Dept. Agr., Bull. 38.) 



to be made up into a park, while smaller stands are left in other 

 portions of the range. 



1021. The Big tree (Sequoia washingtoniana) now occurs 

 in scattered groves along the west slope of the Sierra Nevada 

 Mountains a distance of 260 miles from the head of Deer creek 

 to the middle fork' of the American River. There are now known 

 only two main groves, and while in all there are several thousand 

 sizable trees, the number of trees remarkable for their size does 



