It grows heartily everywhere--on
moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses, and in the deep, moist
alluvium of meadows with, as we have seen, a multitude of seedlings and
saplings crowding up around the aged, abundantly able to maintain the
forest in prime vigor. 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 year's
seedlings to 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 536 saplings and seedlings, growing promisingly upon
a landslip not exceeding two acres in area. This soil-bed was about
seven years old, and had been seeded almost simultaneously by 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. Toward the south
where the sequoia becomes most exuberant and numerous, the rival trees
become less so; and where they mix with sequoias they grow up beneath
them like slender grasses among stalks of Indian corn.
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