In the first place, no species of coniferous tree in the Range keeps
its members so well together as the 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 young, instead of old
monumental trees, relics of a more extended growth.
Again, the great trunks of the sequoia last for centuries after they
fall. I have a specimen block of sequoia wood, cut from a fallen tree,
which is hardly distinguishable from a similar section cut from a living
tree, although the one cut from the fallen trunk has certainly lain on
the damp forest floor more than 380 years, 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 four feet in diameter and 380 years old was growing, as I
determined 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 380 years. For it is evident that, to find
the whole time, we must add to the 380 years the time that the vanished
portion of the trunk lay in the ditch before being 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.
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