36 DUDLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME 



these trees, but the record was completely concealed by subsequent healthy 

 growth. 



Among a nimiber of similar cases the most instructive record of these 

 ancient fires was observed in the tree of moderate size — the one of 2,171 

 years of age above mentioned. This tree, when felled, had an enormous 

 surface burn on one side, occupying eighteen feet of the circumference 

 and with a height estimated at thirty feet. The fire had eaten through the 

 sap-wood and deeply into the heart. It was an immense black scar and 

 an apparently irreparable wound upon a tree already advanced in age, 

 even for a Sequoia. Yet this was not the only similar injury it had suffered, 

 and before we describe the remarkable life of this tree as registered within, 

 let us see how a Sequoia goes about the repair of such appalling wounds. 



A burn on the bole of a giant Sequoia occurs usually on one side only — 

 the side toward the forest fire. It may be a foot wide or even, as in this 

 case, occupying an enormous area of the trunk surface; it may be of 

 great height, it may decrease the tree's vitality and yet not fatally injure 

 the individual thus attacked. While there is life there is growth. After 

 the wound comes the healing; and there is nothing more insistent (if we 

 may use the word) in the processes of plant life than the attempt of a 

 strong tree to cover a wound on its surface. 



We have two words in our language in which the pronunciation and 

 even the correct orthography is the same, but each has a different meaning, 

 together with a very distinct, ancient and highly respectable ancestry; I 

 mean the word heal. It is a curious fact, moreover, that one of these words 

 is properly applied to the process of healing seen in animal life, the 

 other describes the process of covering a wound, such as that adopted by 

 the tree. The first and frequently used word heal means to make sound, 

 and implies that, after a wound, new tissue organically connected with the 

 old has been formed, that the muscular, the circulatory and the nervous 

 systems have been extended in a normal way from the old to the new, 

 and conditions in the once injured part have been restored to complete 

 and harmonious working order. The latter word heal means to cover or 

 conceal. It is chiefly observed in the gardener's art in the expression "to 

 heal in" (less correctly "heel") as applied to. nursery seedlings. It is a 

 much rarer word than the former, but good old English, and we are told 

 that it may be traced back through the German, the Gothic and even the 

 Latin. We remark, by the way, that so far as we know, not only the 

 English word, but its whole family-tree clear back to the Latin root, is no 

 older than single individuals of Sequoia gigantea to-day standing in the 

 full vigor of life in the groves of Calaveras and Kaweah. 



