One that I measured in the Kings River forest was twenty-five
feet in diameter at the ground and ten feet in diameter 220 feet above
the ground showing the fineness of the taper of the trunk as a whole. No
description can give anything like an adequate idea of their singular
majesty, much less of their beauty. Except the sugar pine, most of their
neighbors with pointed tops seem ever trying to go higher, while the big
tree, soaring above them all, seems satisfied. Its grand domed head
seems to be poised about as lightly as a cloud, giving no impression
of seeking to rise higher. Only when it is young does it show like
other conifers a heavenward yearning, sharply aspiring with a long
quick-growing top. Indeed, the whole tree for the first century or
two, or until it is a hundred or one hundred and fifty feet high, is
arrowhead in form, and, compared with the solemn rigidity of age, seems
as sensitive to the wind as a squirrel's tail. As it grows older, the
lower branches are gradually dropped and the upper ones thinned out
until comparatively few are left. These, however, are developed to a
great size, divide again and again and terminate in bossy, rounded
masses of leafy branch-lets, while the head becomes dome-shaped, and is
the first to feel the touch of the rosy beams of the morning, the last
to bid the sun good night.
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