DESTROYING THE REDWOOD. 23 
‘edger ; thence, in narrower boards, to the ‘ planer,’ and 
before the mud was dry, it had become dressed -floor- 
ing or rustic finish for building. There were thirteen 
logs in that tree, each sixteen feet long. Another tree 
measured two hundred and eighty-eight feet from the 
stump to the end of the last saw-log. It had cut fifty- 
six thousand feet of boards; the top was left at four 
feet diameter and near one hundred feet in length. 
‘Still another, which they were working into shingles, 
had already made three hundred thousand, and enough 
lay there in the log to make one hundred thousand more. 
It was perfectly free from knots and wind-shakes for 
two hundred feet. They count usually on having first- 
class lumber on the first one hundred and fifty feet. We 
measured two large trees, standing within fifty feet of 
each other, which were forty-one feet six inches and 
forty-one feet, respectively, in circumference at five feet 
from the ground. We afterwards saw still larger trees, 
but did not measure them, as some of them grew in 
clumps and were not fairly single stems. My opinion is 
that the average size may be set down as about eight 
feet across the stump. The product will run from two 
hundred thousand to five hundred thousand feet of sawed 
stuff per acre, as nearly as I could figure, depending on 
the frequency of the groups and the size of them. There 
is no undergrowth, and the ground is deep, mellow 
black soil, capable of producing anything grown in Cal- 
ifornia. After clearing there would be no trouble in 
ploughing close up to the stumps, as the roots lie far be- 
low. One tree having died, fire got into it and burned 
twenty feet below the surface, leaving a hole like a well 
where other portions of the trunk could be seen still 
growing upward. The explanation may be due to their 
great age, which has allowed for the accumulation of soil 
around them for hundreds and thousands of years—like 
the ruins of old cities buried under accumulations of cen- 
turies. Attempting to count the rings of annual growth, 
