REDWOOD. 25 



during purpose of their great sylvan colossus, this enables 

 them to close their ranks and crowd the land with an 

 immense amount of timber per acre, absolutely unparalleled. 



Occasionally, when a social circle of these young saplings 

 spring from the parent root, say within the usual area of 

 fifteen to thirty feet or so, renewing their youth in such close 

 proximity, two or more may unite to form one large tree. 

 Dr. Win. P. Gibbons, J. Muir, myself, and others, have often 

 seen the forested Philemon and Beaucis in lasting embrace, 

 typically transmigrated, beneficent and happy still. Red- 

 wood foliage is like yew : the same flat and final starry spray 

 or twiglets of small leaves, say one half to one inch long, dis- 

 tinctly in two rows, flat, line-like, with a sharp point, dark 

 green above though not so shiningly varnished ; underside 

 soft grayish sea-green ; tipped with young Spring growth of 

 bright vivid yellow-green, then for beauty, they far surpass 

 the gayest flowers and the prettiest ferns. More or less mixed 

 with the common foliage, are leaves reduced to scales; in- 

 deed, some trees are found in every grove with awl-pointed, 

 scaly leaves, like the foliage of the Great Sequoia ; but among 

 the Redwoods these are exceptional and somewhat rare. The 

 garland-like limbs are chiefly spreading, save in great age or 

 tipped and drooping with male flowers like the Mammoth 

 King, or pending tiny terminal cones of an oblong shape, 

 one to one and one fourth inches long and one half to three 

 fourths of an inch thick, consisting of numerous trapezoidal 

 disked scales, thickly and roughly implaited by the indrawn 

 or quilted-like center; its very sharp prickly point turned 

 forwards or pressed down and looking outwards; the shield- 

 like disk more or less distinctly marked by a sharp laterally 

 transverse ridge, stem of the scale stout, persisting, compressed, 

 broadly-wedged form with some sharp angles, covered and 

 stained by a dark purple, almost black, shining, fragile, and 

 granular secretion, like gum Catechu. Seeds, three to five 

 to each scale, flat, oval, or obovate in outline, lateral wings 

 very narrow or slightly and often obliquely margined, color 

 dark reddish-brown, only a little notched at the outer and 

 larger end, and shaped like parsnip or other similar seeds. 



Redwoods abound chiefly, if not entirely, on sandstone 

 soil — light, loose, black, or ashy — and always in the track, 

 and confined to the fog limits of the coast, say fifteen to thirty 

 miles inland, and probably never exceed forty or fifty miles, 

 even in the most favorable low coast ranges where the fog 

 passes over low lands or through open gaps. These mighty 

 majestic redwood wands possess a magic power over passing 

 fogs, wontedly precipitating them in showers of rain at their 

 feet — for this, mainly, among many other good reasons, liv- 

 ing springs of the purest Avater ever bubble and babble at 

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