Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/741

Rh them trees which are the wonder of the world. As I stood in their shade, in the groves of Mariposa and Calaveras, and again, under the canopy of the commoner redwood, raised on columns of such majestic height and ample girth, it occurred to me that I could not do better than to share with you, upon this occasion, some of the thoughts which possessed my mind. In their development they may perhaps lead us up to questions of considerable scientific interest.

I shall not detain you with my remarks (which would now be trite) upon the rise or longevity of these far-famed Sequoia trees, or of the sugar-pines, incense-cedar, and firs, associated with them, of which even the prodigious bulk of the dominating Sequoia does not sensibly diminish the grandeur. Although no account and no photographic representation of either species of the far-famed Sequoia trees can give an adequate idea of their singular majesty—still less of their beauty—yet my interest in them did not culminate merely nor mainly in consideration of their size and age. Other trees in other parts of the world may claim to be older. Certain Australian gum-trees (eucalypti) are said to be taller. Some, we are told, rise so high that they might even cast a flicker of shadow upon the summit of the Pyramid of Cheops. Yet the oldest of them doubtless grew from seed which was shed long after the names of the pyramid-builders had been forgotten. So far as we can judge from the actual counting of the layers of several trees, no Sequoia now alive can much overdate the Christian era. Nor was I much impressed with an attraction of man's adding. That the more remarkable of these trees should bear distinguishing appellations seems proper enough. But the tablets of personal names which are affixed to many of them in the most visited groves—as if the memory of more or less notable people of our day might be made more enduring by the juxtaposition—does suggest some incongruity. When we consider that a hand's-breadth at the circumference of any one of the venerable trunks so placarded has recorded in annual lines the lifetime of the individual thus associated with it, one may question whether the next hand's-breadth may not measure the fame of some of the names thus ticketed for adventitious immortality. Whether it be the man or the tree that is honored in the connection, probably either would live as long in fact and in memory without it.

One notable thing about these Sequoia trees is their isolation. Most of the trees associated with them are of peculiar species, and some of them are nearly as local. Yet every pine, fir, and cypress in California is in some sort familiar, because it has near relations in other parts of the world. But the redwoods have none. The redwood—including in that name the two species of "big trees"—belongs to the general cypress family, but is sui generis. Thus isolated systematically, and extremely isolated geographically, and so wonderful in size and port, they, more than other trees, suggest questions. Were they created, thus local and lonely, denizens of California only;