42 DUDLEY MEMORIAL VOLUME 



scientific man, far beyond that of the other trees of the forest. The United 

 States should own and properly protect every one of them. Senator Hoar, 

 of Massachusetts, once said if the Calaveras Groves were in Massachusetts, 

 she would herself buy them and not ask the National government to pur- 

 chase them. There are some things, however, that are the natural heritage 

 of a nation, and the Sequoia gigantea is one of them. We would rather 

 see the Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon of the Colorado 

 under the protection of the United States than that of any state, not ex- 

 cepting California or Massachusetts. If the Sequoias are among the most 

 remarkable objects on the globe, if they are the best calculated, as we can 

 show, of any living organism to throw light on certain problems of scientific 

 inquiry, then a nation should own them and their preservation should be 

 a matter of national pride. 



We make every effort to preserve the manuscript of our great Anglo- 

 Saxon and American charters; nevertheless the ink fades, the parchment 

 crumbles and they disappear, except from the lives of just men. We house 

 the archives of our wars in buildings of great cost, maintained with great 

 care, yet all these are on paper that is more perishable than the parchment 

 of our charters. In these great trees, however, we have, deep in their annual 

 rings, records which extend far beyond the beginnings of Anglo-Saxon 

 peoples, beyond even the earliest struggles for liberty and democracy among 

 the Greeks, the first of the Indo-Europeans to crystallize into national life 

 through the pressure of this struggle. The records are those of forest 

 conilagrations, of the vicissitudes of seasons, of periods of drouth and periods 

 of abundant and favoring rains, and we might find next to the charcoal of 

 some trunk scar, centuries old, the stone inplements belonging to the ancient 

 aboriginal inhabitants of Western America. Practically none of these records 

 have yet been studied. Let the nation purchase these trees of the Cala- 

 veras groves — among the largest of all those still remaining alive — let it 

 take them as a right and a duty, not parleying with the cupidity of an 

 owner who has done nothing to increase their value; let it gradually gather 

 under its protection all the groves of Sequoia, now in alien hands, and care 

 for them all intelligently. When the oldest of trees succumb and die, as 

 from past injuries they must do in time, then let them be felled; and in- 

 stead of being sold or burned with criminal indifference to their real value, 

 as at the present day, may their records be read and recorded by skilled 

 hands and interpreted by the best intelligence ; and finally may their 

 massive timbers, of wonderful fineness, uniformity, luster, color and beauty, 

 be used only in the interior of a nation's buildings, in places which shall 

 the longest endure. 



