THE SEQUOIA 275 



seeds, excepting perhaps its relative, the Red- 

 wood of the Coast Mountains. Millions are 

 ripened annually by a single tree, and the product 

 of one of the main groves in a fruitful year would 

 suffice to plant all the mountain ranges of the 

 world. 



The dense tufted sprays make snug nesting 

 places for birds, and in some of the loftiest, leaf- 

 iest towers of verdure thousands of generations 

 have been reared, the great solemn trees shedding 

 off flocks of merry singers every year from nests, 

 like the flocks of winged seeds from the cones. 



The Big Tree keeps its youth far longer than 

 any of its neighbors. Most silver firs are old in 

 their second or third century, pines in their fourth 

 or fifth, while the Big Tree growing beside them 

 is still in the bloom of its youth, juvenile in every 

 feature at the age of old pines, and cannot be 

 said to attain anything like prime size and beauty 

 before its fifteen hundredth year, or under favor- 

 able circumstances become old before its three 

 thousandth. Many, no doubt, are much older 

 than this. On one of the Kings River giants, 

 thirty-five feet and eight inches in diameter ex- 

 clusive of bark, I counted upwards of four thou- 

 sand annual wood-rings, in which there was no 

 trace of decay after all these centuries of moun- 

 tain weather. There is no absolute limit to the 

 existence of any tree. Their death is due to ac- 

 cidents, not, as of animals, to the wearing out of 



