30 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



four thousand rings, a ring for every year of its life. Its trunk, 

 exclusive of bark, was thirty-five feet eight inches in diameter. As 

 the bark of the very largest sequoias is two feet or more in thickness, 

 this giant must have measured forty feet in diameter when it was 

 still growing on one of the slopes of the Kings River. 



LARGEST OF THE MONSTERS 



In the Sequoia National Park, upon the upper slopes of the Sierra 

 Nevada Mountains in central California, and in the little General 

 Grant National Park six miles away and under the same-management, 

 grow 1,166,000 sequoia trees, of which 12,000 are more than ten feet 

 in diameter. Some of the others have these dimensions: 



General Sherman Tree: Diameter, 36.5 feet; height, 279.9 feet. 



General Grant Tree: Diameter, 35 feet; height, 264 feet. 



Abraham Lincoln Tree: Diameter, 31 feet; height, 270 feet. 



California Tree: Diameter, 30 feet; height, 260 feet. 



George Washington Tree: Diameter, 29 feet; height, 255 feet. 



William McKinley Tree: Diameter, 28 feet; height, 291 feet. 



Dalton Tree: Diameter, 27 feet; height, 292 feet: 

 There are sequoia trees of great size in several other parts of Cali- 

 fornia also, notably in the Yosemite National Park, where three dis- 

 tinct groves are found; but by far the greatest number, and the indi- 

 vidual trees of greatest size, are in the Sequoia National Park and its 

 little neighbor. 



HOW TO VISUALIZE A BIG TREE 



It is extremely difficult to realize what the dimensions of these 

 trees really mean. 



To visualize as best you can the greatest of those now standing, the 

 General Sherman Tree, measure off and stake its diameter, 36 feet 6 

 inches, upon the ground in front of a church the height of whose 

 steeple you can readily ascertain. Then stand back a distance equal 

 to the height of the tree, 280 feet, and look hard at the stakes whose 

 distance apart represents the thickness of the trunk. 



Now raise your eyes slowly, imagining this trunk rising in front of 

 the church, tapering very slightly as it rises. When you are looking 

 upward at an angle of forty-five degrees from the spot where you are 

 standing (and this will not be difficult to calculate) you will be looking 

 at the point where the top of the General Sherman Tree would be if it 

 were growing in front of your church instead of in the Sequoia 

 National Park. The known height of the steeple will help you verify 

 this calculation. 



It will help your comprehension of the great size of these trees to 

 know that a box big enough to have easily held the ill-fated ship 

 Lusitania, one of the largest ever built, could be made from inch 



