I50 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



25 to 30 feet thick, are not rare. During four or five centuries 

 the tapering- stem is clothed with slender, crowded branches, 

 which are erect above and horizontal near the middle of the 

 tree, and below sweep toward the ground in graceful curves, 

 thus forming a dense, narrow, strict pyramid. Gradually the 

 lower branches disappear, and those at the top of the tree lose 

 their aspiring habit ; the trunk, which is much enlarged and but- 

 tressed at the base, and fluted with broad, low, rounded ridges, 

 becomes naked for 100 or 150 feet; and the narrow, rounded 

 crown of short, horizontal branches loses its regularity, and 

 gains picturesqueness from the eccentric development of some of 

 the branches or the destruction of others." 



The "Report on the Big Trees of California," issued by the 

 Division of Forestry of the U. S. Department of Agriculture in 

 1900, introduces the subject as follows : Before the glacial pe- 

 riod the genus of big trees called vSequoia flourished widely in 

 the temperate zones of three continents. There were many spe- 

 cies, and Europe, Asia, and i\merica had each its share. But 

 when the ice fields moved down out of the north the luxuriant 

 vegetation of the age declined, and with it these multitudes of 

 trees. One after another the different kinds gave w^ay, their 

 remains became buried, and when the ice receded just two spe- 

 cies, the Big Tree and Redwood, survived. Both grew in Cali- 

 fornia, separate from the other, and each occupying, in com- 

 parison with its former territory, a mere island of space. As 

 we know them now, the Redwood { Sequoia sempervirens) lives 

 only in a strip of the coast ranges 10 to 30 miles wide, extend- 

 ing from just within the southern border of Oregon to the Bay 

 of Monterey, while the Big Tree (Sequoia zvashiiigfoniana) is 

 found only in small groves scattered along the west slope of the 

 Sierra Nevada Mountains, from the middle fork of the Ameri- 

 can River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of 260 miles. 



The utmost search reveals but ten main groups, and the 

 total number of good-sized trees in these groups must be lim- 

 ited to a few thousand. It is, moreover, the plain truth that 

 all the specimens which are remarkable for their size do not 

 exceed 500. 



The Big Trees are unique in the world — the grandest, the 

 largest, the oldest, the most majestically graceful of trees — and 

 if it were not enough to be all this, they are among the scantiest 

 of known tree species, and have the extreme scientific value of 

 being the best living representatives of a former geologic age. 

 It is a tree which has come down to us through the vicissitudes 

 of many centuries solelv because of its superb qualifications. 

 Its bark is often two feet thick and almost non-combustible. 

 The oldest specimens felled are still sound at the heart, and fun- 

 ofus is an enemv unknown to it. Yet with all these means of 



