FIELD AND FOREST. 45 



ing for portions burnt away, and has branches 6 feet in diameter. 

 Destructive fires have devastated this grove, prostrating and partially 

 or wholly consuming certain trees and eating through the great boles 

 of others, making apertures through which horse and rider can pass 

 erect, while the monster tree waves its branches embellished with di- 

 minutive cones two hundred feet and more above. 



The popular impression has been that these trees are not only of 

 immense age, and in process of decay and sure of early extinction as 

 a species, but that there are no young trees, and that the few decaying 

 veterans are found in one or two isolated clusters only. It is not alto- 

 gether well-founded. The groves discovered and described are in 

 geographical order from North to South, Caleveras, Stanislaus, Crane 

 Flat, Mariposa, Fresno, King's and Kawech rivers, North Fork Tule 

 river, and South Fork Tule river ; and are found on the flank of the 

 Sierras, at^an elevation of 5.000 to 6.000 feet. They lie between lat- 

 itude 36° and 38° 15 ; while the redwoods range six degrees, from 36° 

 to 42°. The former occupy patches miles from each other, intersper- 

 sed with trees of several other kinds ; the latter form' dense forests by 

 themselves. The one is found only on the Sierras, the other on the 

 Coast Range, enveloped in ocean fogs. Both are limited to Califor- 

 nia, with the exception of a few redwood stragglers across the line in 

 Oregon. The one, if felled, never sprouts ; the other, when cut down, 

 sends forth a profuse supply of shoots from the battered stump. The 

 gigantea is presimied to be on the wane as a species, yet young plants 

 like walking sticks are seen in the groves, and plants are propagatec 

 by thousands and are prospering in this country and in Europe. A! 

 fine specimen may be seen in the grounds of the Department of Agri- 

 culture. 



' The age of these giants is very great. Prof. Whitney estimated one 

 cut down in Calaveras at 1.300 years; Prof. John Muir assumes some 

 to be 3.000 years old. Their timber is almost indestructible. Muir 

 saw a fallen trunk a few weeks since that had lain weathering three 

 hundred and eighty years, and how much longer cannot be guessed, 

 and was still in color and strength unchanged in all those years. A 

 section had been eaten away by fire, and in the furrow of six feet deep 

 in which the monster had reposed a seed of the silver fir (Picea gran- 

 dis) had germinated and grown to a breadth of four feet in diameter 

 made up of three hundred -and eighty annular rings. In falling a tree 



