Age of Big Trees of California 447 



the opposite side. The remarks which we have made in 

 connection with the curved Ibex horn are applicable here, 

 as were also those which were appended to the head of a 

 rook given at p. 237. In the latter, however, it was 

 simply overgrowth in a straight line, for the extremity of 

 one mandible had been shot away. In vegetable life the 

 results of local injury in producing distortions are very 

 abundantly seen. Whenever a twig is bent awry local 

 injury somewhere between the bend and the trunk or 

 bough is to be suspected. So in animal life, if the 

 deformity be not a congenital one search must be made for 

 evidence of proximal damage. 



AGE OF THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



" Under the most favourable conditions these giants prob- 

 ably live 5,000 years or more, though few of even the larger 

 trees are more than half as old. I never saw a big tree that 

 had died a natural death, barring accidents they seem to be 

 immortal, being exempt from all the diseases that afflict and 

 kill other trees. Unless destroyed by man they live on inde- 

 finitely until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by 

 storms, or by the giving way of the ground on which they 

 stand. The age of one that was felled in the Calaveras 

 Grove, for the sake of having its stump for a dancing floor, 

 was about 1,300 years, and its diameter, measured across the 

 stump, 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was cut down 

 in the King's River Forest was about the same size, but 

 nearly a thousand years older (2,200 years), though not a 

 very old-looking tree. It was felled to procure a section for 

 exhibition, and thus an opportunity was given to count its 

 annual rings of growth. The colossal scarred monument 

 in the King's River Forest is burned half through, and 

 I spent a day in making an estimate of its age, clearing 



