

THE BIG TREE AND ITS STORY 



The Sequoia and the History of Biological Science* 



The Story of the Big Tree as briefly told on the label 



THIS I^io- Troc^ lived nearly 1400 

 years. It sprouted in its 

 undiscovered mountain wil- 

 derness of the New World some 500 

 years after the time of Christ when the 

 Roman Empire had only just come to 

 an end. It witnessed the birth of 

 ]\Iahomet and was a good-sized tree 

 in the reign of Alfred the Great. It 

 was not far from 1000 years old at the 

 time America was discovered. Three 

 hundred and fifty years later when the 

 pioneer life of America had spread 

 from the eastern shores to the western 

 and the lofty race of the sequoias had 

 been found b}^ civilized man (only 

 sixty years ago), this tree was 1300 

 years old. It has thus held its crown 

 steadfastly to the sky while some forty 

 generations of men have lived and died. 

 A Big Tree rasLj live 5000 j^ears how- 

 ever, and perhaps longer if not 

 destroyed by accident or disastrous 

 chmatic change. Those Big Trees of 

 California averaging from 2000 to 3000 

 years old have lived no more than half, 

 possibly only a fraction, of the time 

 they might live. If they now escape 

 fire and the ax, they are likely to con- 

 tinue to look down on the world for 



still otlu^r thousands of years, while 

 some hundred more generations of men 

 are born and die, while present weak- 

 ened civilizations decline and others 

 better founded triumph. 



Moreover, as the centuries go on, 

 these trees will seem increasingly 

 remarkable, for not only are they god- 

 like among trees in stature and length 

 of hfe, but also they are as strangely 

 out of place among the world's other 

 trees as would be the mastodon and 

 mammoth among our deer and oxen. 

 They belong to an old race which 

 flourished, especially in the Arctic 

 regions, during Tertiary and Cre- 

 taceous times and was destroyed by the 

 coming of the Glacial Period. But the 

 destruction Avas not quite complete: 

 two species, the Big Tree and the red- 

 wood, on the oldest, warmest parts of 

 California's mountains succeeded in 

 bridging the time of ice. There to- 

 day — and nowhere else on the globe — 

 the remnant of the ancient race stands. 

 The peculiar distribution in groves 

 separated by wide gaps was probably 

 caused by ancient glaciers which 

 lingered in these gaps. 



The section of the Big Tree '^Mark 



*The greater part of this leaflet was written by George H. Sherwood and appeared in Leaflet 

 No. 8, The Sequoia. Additions and changes have been made by Henry E. Crampton and 

 F. A. Lucas. The label is by Miss M. C. Dickerson. 



