of bees that have lost their queen and become anxious to repair the damage limbs that have grown outward for centuries at right angles to the trunk begin to turn upward to the assist in making a new crown each speedily the special form of true even in the case of mere burned half through some mere ornamental will try to go aloft and do 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 roots of the fallen giant may be from forty to sixty feet wide and they are speedily occupied by out of these 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 are their trunks will touch and crowd against each other and even appear as one in some cases it is generally believed that this grand was once far more widely distributed over the but after long and careful study i have come to the conclusion that it never was at least since the close of the period because a search along the of the groves and in the between fails to reveal a single trace of its previous existence beyond its present bounds notwithstanding i feel confident that if every in the range were to die to day numerous monuments of their existence would remain of so a nature as to be available for the student more than ten thousand years hence the mountains of in the first place we might notice that no species of tree in the range keeps its individuals so well together as a mile is perhaps the greatest distance of any from the main body and all of those that have come under my observation are young instead of old trees relics of a more extended growth again trunks frequently endure for centuries after they fall i have a specimen block cut from a fallen trunk which is hardly 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 probably thrice as long the time measure in the case is simply this when the ponderous trunk to which the old 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 and years old as determined by cutting it half through and counting the rings thus 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 burned out of the way the time that passed before the seed from which the fir sprang fell into the prepared soil and took root now because trunks are never wholly consumed in one forest fire and those fires only at considerable intervals and because after being cleared are often left for centuries it becomes the forests 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 supposed to have been once covered with every tree may have fallen and every trunk may have been burned or buried leaving not a remnant many of the made by the fall of the ponderous trunks and the made by their roots would remain patent for thousands of years after the last of the trunks that made them had vanished much of this ditch writing would no doubt be quickly by the flood action of overflowing streams and rain washing but no portion would remain engraved on ridge tops beyond such destructive action for where all the conditions are favorable it is almost now these historic and root occur in all the present groves and forests hut as far as i have observed not the faintest of one presents itself outside of them we therefore conclude that the area covered by has not been diminished during the last eight or ten thousand years and probably not at all in post times is the species to f what are its relations to climate soil and associated trees f all the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light as we shall endeavor to show upon the peculiar 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 the mountains of are few young trees or growing up around the failing old ones to the race and in as much as those aged so nearly are the only ones commonly known the species to most seems doomed to speedy as being nothing more than an remnant in the so called struggle for life by pines and that have driven it into its last in moist where climate is favorable but the language of the majestic continuous forests of the south a very different impression no tree of all the forest is more established in with climate and soil it grows heartily everywhere � on rocky along and in the deep moist of meadows with a multitude of and crowding up around the aged seemingly abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor for every old tree there is one or more in all the glory of prime and for each of these many young trees and crowds of so that 