40 DUDLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME 



Again, it is to be observed from the notes of the tree's yearly growth, 

 that after it was out of its first youth, the periods of most vigorous increase 

 were after the successive burnings and during the periods of healing. In 

 part this accounted for the lessened area of the tree's live circumference; 

 but as this thickening of the rings appears to continue after complete healing 

 has taken place, when the tree is again forming tissue over its entire cir- 

 cumference, and as this phenomenon was seen in other trees similarly in- 

 jured, one is led to believe that an increased activity in the tree's life had 

 been occasioned not by the burn, but from the effort at healing and recover- 

 ing from what threatened to be a vital wound; and that this activity led 

 to more vigorous growth. It is a curious fact, moreover, that in the middle 

 of the long period of freedom from fire, from 245 to 1441, a period of nearly 

 twelve centuries, the tree made its least relative increase in diameter. Peace 

 and apparent prosperity had been coincident with a sluggish growth if they 

 had not been the cause of it. 



About three and one-half inches was the most frequent amount of radial 

 growth during one century, a total increase of about seven inches in the 

 diameter of the stem; but during the first six hundred years its average was 

 five inches (a total increase of ten inches in diameter each century) and 

 during the first and fourth centuries of this tree's existence its radial increase 

 was six inches in each case. During the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth and 

 eleventh centuries the increase in the radius of the stem was between two 

 and three inches only per century. It was during this period, from the 

 seventh to the twelfth century of its existence — the period of greatest depres- 

 sion in the apparent vitality of the tree — that the rings or annular layers be- 

 came so thin that it was impossible to count them without the aid of a lens : 

 over forty layers were frequently found in one inch of radial line, and in 

 two cases apparently there were fifty^two and fifty-four layers in each inch.' 

 / I cannot help thinking we are here in the presence of one of the most 

 remarkable products of the globe, not excepting those of human civilization. 

 Almost no structure erected by human hands has come down to us intact 

 through the lifetime of a Sequoia; and the few we can admire are hewn 

 from inanimate marble or granite and cannot be compared to a living or- 

 ganism, vast in life and complete in the records of every year of its existence. 

 An empire or republic may be compared to the life of these great trees. 

 But what empire or republic has lived for twenty-five centuries? None 

 worthy of the name, and certainly none among those of the Aryan civilization. 

 Then in the building of a Sequoia, no blood has been shed through all 

 its twenty-five hundred years, no injustice or oppression has secured the 

 means necessary for its construction, no hate or strife has been engendered, 



