Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1873-03-15
The Kings Of the Forest.

So much of late years has been writ
ten about the gigantic SequOias or big
trees of California, and so familiar has
almost every one been made with the
wood and bark-the cones, seeds, and
foliage of these wonders of the woods,
by a specimen exhibited all over the
country a few years ago, that many
words need not be spent upon them
here. Although some of the Eucalypti
of Australia are said to exceed them in
height-or, rather to exceed those al
ready discovered, and the baobab of
Africa to equal them in diameter, yet,
both dimensions considered, they must
be regarded as the giants of the vege-
table creation, and fairly entitled to be
called kings of the forest" In order
to get practical working idea of the
size of the lSeguOids, let us pause a
moment over the dimensions of other
famous trees. D.
For example, the diameter of the yew
which was planted at Hedsor, in Buck
inghamshire, England, some four hun
bred years ago, is twenty-seven feet.
The largest oak in England (Cal-
thorpe Oak, Yorkshire), at six inches
above the ground, measures thirty-one
feet around.
The tallest tree in England is said to
be in Clipston Park, an estate of the
Duke of Portland. It reaches to the
height of one hundred and forty-one
feet.
The circumference of an acer, grow
ing in South Carolina, is, at four inches
from the base, forty-one feet.
Now, the Father of the Forest" on
the Calaveras slope, measured, in its
prime, four hundred and thirty five feet
III height, and one hundred and ten feet
in circumference at the base. The
" Mother of the Forest" measures now
three hundred and twenty feet in
height, and ninety feet in circumference
at the base. The Traveller" which
was felled in 1858, by five men working
twenty-five days with pump-augers and
wedges, was three hundred feet high,
and ninety-six feet in circumference on
tho ground. The Burnt Tree" will
admit a horse and his rider to trot over
a space of sixty feet within it's body,
and then, by stoop of the head, permit
him to ride cut through knot-hole.
OF the SeqatoiaS, of which these are
samples, there are known to be seven
groves and one hundred and ninety
eight trees. In the vast unexplored re-
gions of the Sierra Nevada there are,
doubtless, others. The cones of these
trees are of the size of hens egg, and
the seeds so small that fifty thousand
of them will not weigh one pound avoir-
dupois. The bark is very thick-some-
times eighteen Understand is corruga-
ted longitudinally. The wood, soft and
elastic, is straight-grained, free-split-
ting, and light-not as even as the red
cedar, but quite as valuable for material
in house-fnishing. The soil in which
these trees grow is deep, the altitude
where they are found from FIVE to seven
thousand feet the condition in which
they are now, under the care of the
State guardian and owned by the Uni
ted States, is good, and the prospect of
their preservation for several centuries
longer probable.
Perhaps the SequoiaS are most re-
markable of all for the very gradual
manner in which they taper toward the
summit of the Trunks circumstance
which, it is needless to say, greatly in
creases the actual cubic measurement of
the timber they yield. Some of them,
at two hundred feet from the ground,
measure from five to eight feet in diam
eter In others there is loss, in Cir
conference, of less than one foot in q
rise of one hundred feet. Those who
are accustomed to the measurement of
timber will readily perceive the enor-
nous number of cubic feet which must
thus be contained in single tree.
The age of the SeQuoia gigantea is
now supposed to extend back of the
Christian era, perhaps to the days of
Abraham, certainly to those of King
David. In the tree which was felled
eighteen hundred annual circles were
distinctly counted, without including
very many around the heart of the tree,
which were too intermixed to be dis
tinguished-so that, when "Solomon
began to build the house of the Lord
that was at Jerusalem, in Mount
Moriah, and sent letter to Hiram, the
King Of Eyre, saying, "Send me cedar
trees, fr-trees, and algum-trees, out OF
Lebanon" the great trees of California
were sapplings.