id stringlengths 16 16 | text stringlengths 151 2.3k | word_count int64 30 60 | source stringclasses 1
value |
|---|---|---|---|
twg_000000040700 | laden with snowone mass of bloom; in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick among the shimmering needles, and the big purple burs are ripening in the mellow light; but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040701 | the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as if every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the royal crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid sun-flood breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like mountain water among boulders. But to me there is something more impressive | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040702 | in the fall of light upon these Silver Pines. It seems beaten to the finest dust, and is shed off in myriads of minute sparkles that seem to come from the very heart of the trees, as if, like rain falling upon fertile soil, it had been absorbed, to reappear in flowers of light. This species also gives forth the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040703 | finest music to the wind. After listening to it in all kinds of winds, night and day, season after season, I think I could approximate to my position on the mountains by this pine-music alone. If you would catch the tones of separate needles, climb a tree. They are well tempered, and give forth no uncertain sound, each standing out, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040704 | with no interference excepting during heavy gales; then you may detect the click of one needle upon another, readily distinguishable from their free, wing-like hum. Some idea of their temper may be drawn from the fact that, notwithstanding they are so long, the vibrations that give rise to the peculiar shimmering of the light are made at the rate of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040705 | about two hundred and fifty per minute. When a Sugar Pine and one of this species equal in size are observed together, the latter is seen to be far more simple in manners, more lithely graceful, and its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated; but then, it is, on the other hand, much less dignified and original in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040706 | demeanor. The Silver Pine seems eager to shoot aloft. Even while it is drowsing in autumn sun-gold, you may still detect a skyward aspiration. But the Sugar Pine seems too unconsciously noble, and too complete in every way, to leave room for even a heavenward care. DOUGLAS SPRUCE (_Pseudotsuga Douglasii_) This tree is the king of the spruces, as the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040707 | Sugar Pine is king of pines. It is by far the most majestic spruce I ever beheld in any forest, and one of the largest and longest lived of the giants that flourish throughout the main pine belt, often attaining a height of nearly feet, and a diameter of six or seven. Where the growth is not too close, the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040708 | strong, spreading branches come more than halfway down the trunk, and these are hung with innumerable slender, swaying sprays, that are handsomely feathered with the short leaves which radiate at right angles all around them. This vigorous spruce is ever beautiful, welcoming the mountain winds and the snow as well as the mellow summer light, and maintaining its youthful freshness | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040709 | undiminished from century to century through a thousand storms. It makes its finest appearance in the months of June and July. The rich brown buds with which its sprays are tipped swell and break about this time, revealing the young leaves, which at first are bright yellow, making the tree appear as if covered with gay blossoms; while the pendulous | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040710 | bracted cones with their shell-like scales are a constant adornment. The young trees are mostly gathered into beautiful family groups, each sapling exquisitely symmetrical. The primary branches are whorled regularly around the axis, generally in fives, while each is draped with long, feathery sprays, that descend in curves as free and as finely drawn as those of falling water. In | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040711 | Oregon and Washington it grows in dense forests, growing tall and mast-like to a height of feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber tree. But in the Sierra it is scattered among other trees, or forms small groves, seldom ascending higher than feet, and never making what would be called a forest. It is not particular in its choice | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040712 | of soilwet or dry, smooth or rocky, it makes out to live well on them all. Two of the largest specimens I have measured are in Yosemite Valley, one of which is more than eight feet in diameter, and is growing upon the terminal moraine of the residual glacier that occupied the South Fork Canon; the other is nearly as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040713 | large, growing upon angular blocks of granite that have been shaken from the precipitous front of the Liberty Cap near the Nevada Fall. No other tree seems so capable of adapting itself to earthquake taluses, and many of these rough boulder-slopes are occupied by it almost exclusively, especially in yosemite gorges moistened by the spray of waterfalls. INCENSE CEDAR (_Libocedrus | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040714 | decurrens_) The Incense Cedar is another of the giants quite generally distributed throughout this portion of the forest, without exclusively occupying any considerable area, or even making extensive groves. It ascends to about feet on the warmer hillsides, and reaches the climate most congenial to it at about from to feet, growing vigorously at this elevation on all kinds of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040715 | soil, and in particular it is capable of enduring more moisture about its roots than any of its companions, excepting only the Sequoia. The largest specimens are about feet high, and seven feet in diameter. The bark is brown, of a singularly rich tone very attractive to artists, and the foliage is tinted with a warmer yellow than that of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040716 | any other evergreen in the woods. Casting your eye over the general forest from some ridge-top, the color alone of its spiry summits is sufficient to identify it in any company. [Illustration: INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME.] In youth, say up to the age of seventy or eighty years, no other tree forms so strictly tapered a cone from top | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040717 | to bottom. The branches swoop outward and downward in bold curves, excepting the younger ones near the top, which aspire, while the lowest droop to the ground, and all spread out in flat, ferny plumes, beautifully fronded, and imbricated upon one another. As it becomes older, it grows strikingly irregular and picturesque. Large special branches put out at right angles | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040718 | from the trunk, form big, stubborn elbows, and then shoot up parallel with the axis. Very old trees are usually dead at the top, the main axis protruding above ample masses of green plumes, gray and lichen-covered, and drilled full of acorn holes by the woodpeckers. The plumes are exceedingly beautiful; no waving fern-frond in shady dell is more unreservedly | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040719 | beautiful in form and texture, or half so inspiring in color and spicy fragrance. In its prime, the whole tree is thatched with them, so that they shed off rain and snow like a roof, making fine mansions for storm-bound birds and mountaineers. But if you would see the _Libocedrus_ in all its glory, you must go to the woods | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040720 | in winter. Then it is laden with myriads of four-sided staminate cones about the size of wheat grains,winter wheat,producing a golden tinge, and forming a noble illustration of Natures immortal vigor and virility. The fertile cones are about three fourths of an inch long, borne on the outside of the plumy branchlets, where they serve to enrich still more the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040721 | surpassing beauty of this grand winter-blooming goldenrod. WHITE SILVER FIR (_Abies concolor_) [Illustration: FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT.] We come now to the most regularly planted of all the main forest belts, composed almost exclusively of two noble firs_A. concolor_ and _A. magnifica_. It extends with no marked interruption for miles, at | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040722 | an elevation of from to nearly feet above the sea. In its youth _A. concolor_ is a charmingly symmetrical tree with branches regularly whorled in level collars around its whitish-gray axis, which terminates in a strong, hopeful shoot. The leaves are in two horizontal rows, along branchlets that commonly are less than eight years old, forming handsome plumes, pinnated like | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040723 | the fronds of ferns. The cones are grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, about from three to four inches long by one and a half to two inches wide, and stand upright on the upper branches. Full-grown trees, favorably situated as to soil and exposure, are about feet high, and five or six feet in diameter near the ground, though larger specimens | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040724 | are by no means rare. As old age creeps on, the bark becomes rougher and grayer, the branches lose their exact regularity, many are snow-bent or broken off, and the main axis often becomes double or otherwise irregular from accidents to the terminal bud or shoot; but throughout all the vicissitudes of its life on the mountains, come what may, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040725 | the noble grandeur of the species is patent to every eye. MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR, OR RED FIR (_Abies magnifica_) This is the most charmingly symmetrical of all the giants of the Sierra woods, far surpassing its companion species in this respect, and easily distinguished from it by the purplish-red bark, which is also more closely furrowed than that of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040726 | white, and by its larger cones, more regularly whorled and fronded branches, and by its leaves, which are shorter, and grow all around the branchlets and point upward. In size, these two Silver Firs are about equal, the _magnifica_ perhaps a little the taller. Specimens from to feet high are not rare on well-ground moraine soil, at an elevation of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040727 | from to feet above sea-level. The largest that I measured stands back three miles from the brink of the north wall of Yosemite Valley. Fifteen years ago it was feet high, with a diameter of a little more than five feet. Happy the man with the freedom and the love to climb one of these superb trees in full flower | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040728 | and fruit. How admirable the forest-work of Nature is then seen to be, as one makes his way up through the midst of the broad, fronded branches, all arranged in exquisite order around the trunk, like the whorled leaves of lilies, and each branch and branchlet about as strictly pinnate as the most symmetrical fern-frond. The staminate cones are seen | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040729 | growing straight downward from the under side of the young branches in lavish profusion, making fine purple clusters amid the grayish-green foliage. On the topmost branches the fertile cones are set firmly on end like small casks. They are about six inches long, three wide, covered with a fine gray down, and streaked with crystal balsam that seems to have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040730 | been poured upon each cone from above. Both the Silver Firs live years or more when the conditions about them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may often be seen, heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising generation, with a protecting grove of saplings pressing close around his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040731 | a leaf seems wanting. Other companies are made up of trees near the prime of life, exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and gesture, as if Nature had culled them one by one with nice discrimination from all the rest of the woods. [Illustration: VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR.] It is from this tree, called Red | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040732 | Fir by the lumberman, that mountaineers always cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate as to be within its limits. Two rows of the plushy branches overlapping along the middle, and a crescent of smaller plumes mixed with ferns and flowers for a pillow, form the very best bed imaginable. The essences of the pressed leaves seem | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040733 | to fill every pore of ones body, the sounds of falling water make a soothing hush, while the spaces between the grand spires afford noble openings through which to gaze dreamily into the starry sky. Even in the matter of sensuous ease, any combination of cloth, steel springs, and feathers seems vulgar in comparison. The fir woods are delightful sauntering-grounds | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040734 | at any time of year, but most so in autumn. Then the noble trees are hushed in the hazy light, and drip with balsam; the cones are ripe, and the seeds, with their ample purple wings, mottle the air like flocks of butterflies; while deer feeding in the flowery openings between the groves, and birds and squirrels in the branches, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040735 | make a pleasant stir which enriches the deep, brooding calm of the wilderness, and gives a peculiar impressiveness to every tree. No wonder the enthusiastic Douglas went wild with joy when he first discovered this species. Even in the Sierra, where so many noble evergreens challenge admiration, we linger among these colossal firs with fresh love, and extol their beauty | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040736 | again and again, as if no other in the world could henceforth claim our regard. [Illustration: SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS.] It is in these woods the great granite domes rise that are so striking and characteristic a feature of the Sierra. And here too we find the best of the garden meadows. They | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040737 | lie level on the tops of the dividing ridges, or sloping on the sides of them, embedded in the magnificent forest. Some of these meadows are in great part occupied by _Veratrumalba_, which here grows rank and tall, with boat-shaped leaves thirteen inches long and twelve inches wide, ribbed like those of cypripedium. Columbine grows on the drier margins with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040738 | tall larkspurs and lupines waist-deep in grasses and sedges; several species of castilleia also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets and daisies. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily_L. parvum_. The flowers are orange-colored and quite small, the smallest I ever saw of the true lilies; but it is showy nevertheless, for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040739 | it is seven to eight feet high and waves magnificent racemes of ten to twenty flowers or more over ones head, while it stands out in the open ground with just enough of grass and other plants about it to make a fringe for its feet and show it off to best advantage. A dry spot a little way back | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040740 | from the margin of a Silver Fir lily garden makes a glorious campground, especially where the slope is toward the east and opens a view of the distant peaks along the summit of the range. The tall lilies are brought forward in all their glory by the light of your blazing camp-fire, relieved against the outer darkness, and the nearest | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040741 | of the trees with their whorled branches tower above you like larger lilies, and the sky seen through the garden opening seems one vast meadow of white lily stars. In the morning everything is joyous and bright, the delicious purple of the dawn changes softly to daffodil yellow and white; while the sunbeams pouring through the passes between the peaks | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040742 | give a margin of gold to each of them. Then the spires of the firs in the hollows of the middle region catch the glow, and your camp grove is filled with light. The birds begin to stir, seeking sunny branches on the edge of the meadow for sun-baths after the cold night, and looking for their breakfasts, every one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040743 | of them as fresh as a lily and as charmingly arrayed. Innumerable insects begin to dance, the deer withdraw from the open glades and ridge-tops to their leafy hiding-places in the chaparral, the flowers open and straighten their petals as the dew vanishes, every pulse beats high, every life-cell rejoices, the very rocks seem to tingle with life, and God | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040744 | is felt brooding over everything great and small. BIG TREE (_Sequoia gigantea_) Between the heavy pine and Silver Fir belts we find the Big Tree, the king of all the conifers in the world, the noblest of a noble race. It extends in a widely interrupted belt from a small grove on the middle fork of the American River to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040745 | the head of Deer Creek, a distance of about miles, the northern limit being near the thirty-ninth parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth, and the elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about to feet. From the American River grove to the forest on Kings River the species occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040746 | distributed along the belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty miles wide. But from Kings River southward the Sequoia is not restricted to mere groves, but extends across the broad rugged basins of the Kaweah and Tule rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly seventy miles, the continuity of this part of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040747 | belt being broken only by deep caons. The Fresno, the largest of the northern groves, occupies an area of three or four square miles, a short distance to the southward of the famous Mariposa Grove. Along the beveled rim of the caon of the south fork of Kings River there is a majestic forest of Sequoia about six miles long | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040748 | by two wide. This is the northernmost assemblage of Big Trees that may fairly be called a forest. Descending the precipitous divide between the Kings River and Kaweah you enter the grand forests that form the main continuous portion of the belt. Advancing southward the giants become more and more irrepressibly exuberant, heaving their massive crowns into the sky from | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040749 | every ridge and slope, and waving onward in graceful compliance with the complicated topography of the region. The finest of the Kaweah section of the belt is on the broad ridge between Marble Creek and the middle fork, and extends from the granite headlands overlooking the hot plains to within a few miles of the cool glacial fountains of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040750 | summit peaks. The extreme upper limit of the belt is reached between the middle and south forks of the Kaweah at an elevation of feet. But the finest block of Big Tree forest in the entire belt is on the north fork of Tule River. In the northern groves there are comparatively few young trees or saplings. But here for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040751 | every old, storm-stricken giant there are many in all the glory of prime vigor, and for each of these a crowd of eager, hopeful young trees and saplings growing heartily on moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses, and in the moist alluvium of meadows, seemingly in hot pursuit of eternal life. [Illustration: SEQUOIA GIGANTEAVIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK.] But though | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040752 | the area occupied by the species increases so much from north to south there is no marked increase in the size of the trees. A height of feet and a diameter near the ground of about feet is perhaps about the average size of full-grown trees favorably situated; specimens feet in diameter are not very rare, and a few are | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040753 | nearly feet high. In the Calaveras Grove there are four trees over feet in height, the tallest of which by careful measurement is feet. The largest I have yet met in the course of my explorations is a majestic old scarred monument in the Kings River forest. It is feet inches in diameter inside the bark four feet from the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040754 | ground. Under the most favorable conditions these giants probably live 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040755 | man, they live on indefinitely 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 years, and its diameter, measured across the stump, feet inside | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040756 | the bark. Another that was cut down in the Kings River forest was about the same size, but nearly a thousand years older ( 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 Kings | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040757 | River forest mentioned above is burned half through, and I spent a day in making an estimate of its age, clearing away the charred surface with an ax and carefully counting the annual rings with the aid of a pocket-lens. The wood-rings in the section I laid bare were so involved and contorted in some places that I was not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040758 | able to determine its age exactly, but I counted over rings, which showed that this tree was in its prime, swaying in the Sierra winds, when Christ walked the earth. No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked down on so many centuries as the Sequoia, or opens such impressive and suggestive views into history. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040759 | So exquisitely harmonious and finely balanced are even the very mightiest of these monarchs of the woods in all their proportions and circumstances there never is anything overgrown or monstrous-looking about them. On coming in sight of them for the first time, you are likely to say, Oh, see what beautiful, noble-looking trees are towering there among the firs and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040760 | pines!their grandeur being in the mean time in great part invisible, but to the living eye it will be manifested sooner or later, stealing slowly on the senses, like the grandeur of Niagara, or the lofty Yosemite domes. Their great size is hidden from the inexperienced observer as long as they are seen at a distance in one harmonious view. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040761 | When, however, you approach them and walk round them, you begin to wonder at their colossal size and seek a measuring-rod. These giants bulge considerably at the base, but not more than is required for beauty and safety; and the only reason that this bulging seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively small section of the shaft | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040762 | is seen at once in near views. One that I measured in the Kings River forest was feet in diameter at the ground, and feet in diameter feet above the ground, showing that the taper of the trunk as a whole is charmingly fine. And when you stand back far enough to see the massive columns from the swelling instep | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040763 | to the lofty summit dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice in the unrivaled display of combined grandeur and beauty. About a hundred feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which instead of making an irregular network run evenly parallel, like the fluting of an architectural column, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040764 | and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the winds and cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there for the sake of beauty only. The young trees have slender simple branches down to the ground, put on with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at the top, horizontal about half-way down, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040765 | and drooping in handsome curves at the base. By the time the sapling is five or six hundred years old this spiry, feathery, juvenile habit merges into the firm, rounded dome form of middle age, which in turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness of old age. No other tree in the Sierra forest has foliage so densely massed or presents | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040766 | outlines so firmly drawn and so steadily subordinate to a special type. A knotty ungovernable-looking branch five to eight feet thick may be seen pushing out abruptly from the smooth trunk, as if sure to throw the regular curve into confusion, but as soon as the general outline is reached it stops short and dissolves in spreading bosses of law-abiding | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040767 | sprays, just as if every tree were growing beneath some huge, invisible bell-glass, against whose sides every branch was being pressed and molded, yet somehow indulging in so many small departures from the regular form that there is still an appearance of freedom. The foliage of the saplings is dark bluish-green in color, while the older trees ripen to a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040768 | warm brownish-yellow tint like Libocedrus. The bark is rich cinnamon-brown, purplish in young trees and in shady portions of the old, while the ground is covered with brown leaves and burs forming color-masses of extraordinary richness, not to mention the flowers and underbrush that rejoice about them in their seasons. Walk the Sequoia woods at any time of year and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040769 | you will say they are the most beautiful and majestic on earth. Beautiful and impressive contrasts meet you everywhere: the colors of tree and flower, rock and sky, light and shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence, tangles of supple hazel-bushes, tree-pillars about as rigid as granite domes, roses and violets, the smallest of their kind, blooming around the feet | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040770 | of the giants, and rugs of the lowly chamaebatia where the sunbeams fall. Then in winter the trees themselves break forth in bloom, myriads of small four-sided staminate cones crowd the ends of the slender sprays, coloring the whole tree, and when ripe dusting the air and the ground with golden pollen. The fertile cones are bright grass-green, measuring about | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040771 | two inches in length by one and a half in thickness, and are made up of about forty firm rhomboidal scales densely packed, with from five to eight seeds at the base of each. A single cone, therefore, contains from two to three hundred seeds, which are about a fourth of an inch long by three sixteenths wide, including a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040772 | thin, flat margin that makes them go glancing and wavering in their fall like a boys kite. The fruitfulness of Sequoia may be illustrated by two specimen branches one and a half and two inches in diameter on which I counted cones. No other Sierra conifer produces nearly so many seeds. Millions are ripened annually by a single tree, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040773 | in a fruitful year the product of one of the northern groves would be enough to plant all the mountain-ranges of the world. Nature takes care, however, that not one seed in a million shall germinate at all, and of those that do perhaps not one in ten thousand is suffered to live through the many vicissitudes of storm, drought, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040774 | fire, and snow-crushing that beset their youth. The Douglas squirrel is the happy harvester of most of the Sequoia cones. Out of every hundred perhaps ninety fall to his share, and unless cut off by his ivory sickle they shake out their seeds and remain on the tree for many years. Watching the squirrels at their harvest work in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040775 | Indian summer is one of the most delightful diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors are blazing in all their glory; the cone-laden trees stand motionless in the warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and ever and anon | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040776 | filling the glens with his happy cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these noble woods, and may oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or resting wing-weary on some leafless twig; here also are the familiar robin of the orchards, and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously fitted for these majestic solitudes; and the Douglas squirrel, making more hilarious, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040777 | exuberant, vital stir than all the bears, birds, and humming wings together. As soon as any accident happens to the crown of these Sequoias, such as being stricken off by lightning or broken by storms, then the branches beneath the wound, no matter how situated, seem to be excited like a colony of bees that have lost their queen, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040778 | become anxious to repair the damage. Limbs that have grown outward for centuries at right angles to the trunk begin to turn upward to assist in making a new crown, each speedily assuming the special form of true summits. Even in the case of mere stumps, burned half through, some mere ornamental tuft will try to go aloft and do | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040779 | its best as a leader in forming a new head. Groups of two or three of these grand trees are often found standing close together, the seeds from which they sprang having probably grown on ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a large tree of a former generation. These patches of fresh, mellow soil beside the upturned | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040780 | roots of the fallen giant may be from forty to sixty feet wide, and they are speedily occupied by seedlings. Out of these seedling-thickets perhaps two or three may become trees, forming those close groups called three graces, loving couples, etc. For even supposing that the trees should stand twenty or thirty feet apart while young, by the time they | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040781 | are full-grown their trunks will touch and crowd against each other and even appear as one in some cases. It is generally believed that this grand Sequoia was once far more widely distributed over the Sierra; but after long and careful study I have come to the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close of the glacial | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040782 | period, because a diligent search along the margins of the groves, and in the gaps between, fails to reveal a single trace of its previous existence beyond its present bounds. Notwithstanding, I feel confident that if every Sequoia in the range were to die to-day, numerous monuments of their existence would remain, of so imperishable a nature as to be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040783 | available for the student more than ten thousand years hence. In the first place we might notice that no species of coniferous tree in the range keeps its individuals so well together as Sequoia; a mile is perhaps the greatest distance of any straggler from the main body, and all of those stragglers that have come under my observation are | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040784 | young, instead of old monumental trees, relics of a more extended growth. Again, Sequoia trunks frequently endure for centuries after they fall. I have a specimen block, cut from a fallen trunk, which is hardly distinguishable from specimens cut from living trees, although the old trunk-fragment from which it was derived has lain in the damp forest more than years, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040785 | probably thrice as long. The time measure in the case is simply this: when the ponderous trunk to which the old vestige belonged fell, it sunk itself into the ground, thus making a long, straight ditch, and in the middle of this ditch a Silver Fir is growing that is now four feet in diameter and years old, as determined | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040786 | by cutting it half through and counting the rings, thus demonstrating that the remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has lain on the ground _more_ than years. For it is evident that to find the whole time, we must add to the years the time that the vanished portion of the trunk lay in the ditch before being | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040787 | burned out of the way, plus the time that passed before the seed from which the monumental fir sprang fell into the prepared soil and took root. Now, because Sequoia trunks are never wholly consumed in one forest fire, and those fires recur only at considerable intervals, and because Sequoia ditches after being cleared are often left unplanted for centuries, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040788 | it becomes evident that the trunk remnant in question may probably have lain a thousand years or more. And this instance is by no means a rare one. But admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once covered with Sequoia every tree may have fallen, and every trunk may have been burned or buried, leaving not a remnant, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040789 | many of the ditches made by the fall of the ponderous trunks, and the bowls made by their upturning roots, would remain patent for thousands of years after the last vestige of the trunks that made them had vanished. Much of this ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced by the flood-action of overflowing streams and rain-washing; but no inconsiderable | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040790 | portion would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond such destructive action; for, where all the conditions are favorable, it is almost imperishable. _Now these historic ditches and root bowls occur in all the present Sequoia groves and forests, but as far as I have observed, not the faintest vestige of one presents itself outside of them_. We therefore conclude that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040791 | the area covered by Sequoia has not been diminished during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably not at all in post-glacial times. _Is the species verging to extinction? What are its relations to climate, soil, and associated trees?_ All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light, as we shall endeavor to show, upon the peculiar | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040792 | distribution of the species, and sustain the conclusion already arrived at on the question of extension. In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are few young trees or saplings growing up around the failing old ones to perpetuate the race, and in as much as those aged Sequoias, so nearly childless, are the only ones commonly known, the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040793 | species, to most observers, seems doomed to speedy extinction, as being nothing more than an expiring remnant, vanquished in the so-called struggle for life by pines and firs that have driven it into its last strongholds in moist glens where climate is exceptionally favorable. But the language of the majestic continuous forests of the south creates a very different impression. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040794 | No tree of all the forest is more enduringly established in concordance with climate and soil. It grows heartily everywhereon moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows, with a multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged, seemingly abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. For every old storm-stricken tree, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040795 | there is one or more in all the glory of prime; and for each of these many young trees and crowds of exuberant saplings. So that if all the trees of any section of the main Sequoia forest were ranged together according to age, a very promising curve would be presented, all the way up from last years seedlings to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040796 | giants, and with the young and middle-aged portion of the curve many times longer than the old portion. Even as far north as the Fresno, I counted saplings and seedlings growing promisingly upon a piece of rough avalanche soil not exceeding two acres in area. This soil bed is about seven years old, and has been seeded almost simultaneously by | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040797 | pines, firs, Libocedrus, and Sequoia, presenting a simple and instructive illustration of the struggle for life among the rival species; and it was interesting to note that the conditions thus far affecting them have enabled the young Sequoias to gain a marked advantage. In every instance like the above I have observed that the seedling Sequoia is capable of growing | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040798 | on both drier and wetter soil than its rivals, but requires more sunshine than they; the latter fact being clearly shown wherever a Sugar Pine or fir is growing in close contact with a Sequoia of about equal age and size, and equally exposed to the sun; the branches of the latter in such cases are always less leafy. Toward | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040799 | the south, however, where the Sequoia becomes _more_ exuberant and numerous, the rival trees become _less_ so; and where they mix with Sequoias, they mostly grow up beneath them, like slender grasses among stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy flood-soil I counted ninety-four Sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch, of ground once occupied | 60 | gutenberg |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.