THE SEQUOIA 323 



of them. We may therefore conclude that the 

 area covered by the species has not been dimin- 

 ished during the last eight or ten thousand 

 years, and probably not at all in post-glacial 

 times. For admitting that upon those areas 

 supposed to have been once covered by Sequoia 

 every tree may have fallen, and that fire and the 

 weather had left not a vestige of them, many 

 of the ditches made by the fall of the ponder- 

 ous trunks, weighing five hundred to nearly a 

 thousand tons, and the bowls made by their up- 

 turned roots would remain visible for thousands 

 of years after the last remnants of the trees had 

 vanished. Some of these records would doubt- 

 less be effaced in a comparatively short time by 

 the inwashing of sediments, but no inconsider- 

 able part of them would remain enduringly en- 

 graved on flat ridge tops, almost wholly free 

 from such action. 



In the northern groves, the only ones that at 

 first came under the observation of students, there 

 are but few seedlings and young trees to take the 

 places of the old ones. Therefore the species 

 was regarded as doomed to speedy extinction, as 

 being only an expiring remnant vanquished in 

 the so-called struggle for life, and shoved into 

 its last strongholds in moist glens where con- 

 ditions are exceptionally favorable. But the 

 majestic continuous forests of the south end of 

 the belt create a very different impression. Here, 



