THE SEQUOIA 279 



" Saw the light that shone 



On Mahomet's uplifted crescent, 

 On many a royal gilded throne 



And deed forgotten in the present, 



.* . . saw the age of sacred trees 

 And Druid groves and mystic larches, 

 And saw from forest domes like these 

 The builder bring his Gothic arches." 



Great trees and groves used to be venerated as 

 sacred monuments and halls of council and wor- 

 ship. But soon after the discovery of the Cala- 

 veras Grove one of the grandest trees was cut 

 down for the sake of a stump ! The laborious 

 vandals had seen " the biggest tree in the world," 

 then, forsooth, they must try to see the biggest 

 stump and dance on it. 



The growth in height for the first two centu- 

 ries is usually at the rate of eight to ten inches a 

 year. Of course all very large trees are old, but 

 those equal in size may vary greatly in age on 

 account of variations in soil, closeness or open- 

 ness of growth, etc. Thus a tree about ten feet 

 in diameter that grew on the side of a meadow 

 was, according to my own count of the wood- 

 rings, only two hundred and fifty-nine years old 

 at the time it was felled, while another in the 

 same grove, of almost exactly the same size but 

 less favorably situated, was fourteen hundred and 

 forty years old. The Calaveras tree cut for a 

 dance floor was twenty-four feet in diameter and 

 only thirteen hundred years old, another about 

 the same size was a thousand years older. 



