The San Francisco call., 1908-09-13

NNE golden day of Indian sum-
... sss,s s,sssr;s IS: .ss .sss tn .s.,,. s.,s.
Of giant sequoias lowered among
the lesser frs and pines A tiny seed only
q quarter of an inch long and light as
paper. winged out of an absurdly small
cone on an immense tree. sailed about
for spell then iuttered down to
where a digging squirrel had made
warm. coy howl in the forest floor
and there curled up comfortably. Next
spring cocky little sprig of green
announced that lusty baby sequoia
had Joined the family circle.
That was i'm the year of the Lord
$3.50 long ago that bare figures give
but the vaguest conception of the dis
tance I'm time And it happened on
gentle slope i'm what today is known
and famed as the Calaveras grove of
Big Trees south of the wagon road
and about hundred yards from the
Calaveras Grove hotel On that spot
still stands a gigantic stump. level
topped. six feet high, 261z feet across
the top and more than SO feet in cir
cumference; and beside that mighty
pediment lies PROSTATE the great col
umn il had borne aloft in all the
grandeur Of 900 feet of straight sky
ward reach. monumental limbs and
dense. dome shaped mass of foliage
II was in 1864, after five men had
lsbored with pump augers and wedges
for 25 days that the great tree fell
with far roverberating roar. And that
was the last chapter in the life story
Of the sequoia thai opened with the
sprouting OF the tiny quarter inch seed
in $50.
The most interesting portion of the
trees history is in its own writing
the concentric circular markings, or
rings on the face of the stump. OF
these Edgar de La Rue of Eldorado
took a life size impression by stretch
ing e long piece of tracing paper from
center TO periphery and drawing on it
the lines that showed beneath. In
the eighties this tracing fell into the
hands of Marsden Manson, city en-
gineer of San Francisco and a true
lover and student of trees, who sup
piled double chronological scale and
analytical data and had fac-simile re-
productions made of the original and
placed in Several hands. Without that
forethought this unique and scientific
ally valuable record and one repre-
senting much painstaking labor would
now be lost, since the original, de-
posted by Manson in the library of the
University of California, has disap-
peared, and his own copy was destroyed
in the FIRE OF 1906. Fifteen copies, made
from one of the-originaI reproductions,
are now on file. with scholars. sci
entihc bodies and Libraries both in
the United States and abroad.
The tracing made of the rings consists
sinpiy Of 1.244 parallel horizontalslines,
each line representing a small segment
OF the corresponding circle on the
stump zop. The spaces between the
lines vary. the smallest being o.OS of
an inch and the largest e.70 of an
inch- Each interlinear space stands,
Of course. for the exact size Of a ring
ur tie tree. Since we know that the
seguoia gi@antea puts on a new ring
for -esch year of growth. we see now,
fIa;. that the rate of growth in our
trc. varied that is. it added more
- IFS girth in some years than in
others; aud secondly, since there are
1-t4 rings that the tree was I,244
years old when it was cut down.
knowing that to have occurred in 1864.
W. easily obtain-and Mansons scale
indeed shows il at a glanee-A. D.
6.o as the year of the trees birth"
It's cradle song was the fnurmur Of
The winds in the great domes of its
elders. If you would put yourself into
the time and place. think yourself into
a sequoia grove; look down its hallowed
aisIes. look. forgetting self and little
things-and it viii seem to you that
you are looking down the "echoing cor
ridors Of time
In 500, the year "Mansonia" las we
will call our tree for the sake of con-
venience) was born. your ancestors
world was very young itself, and very
small The earth was a fat disk, the
western rim of which lay not far be-
yond the pillars OF Hercules. Rome's
fall was the story Of but day before
yesterday. That great food which we
call the "great migrations" had barely
finished its resculpturing of Europe.
England, In a national or political
sense, did not exist. nor did France or
Germany. There was no English Ian
euage; il was not TO be welded till
seven centuries later. For the first
printed book the world was to wait
$40 years. All over what we are
pleased 70 think of as the civilized"
world Germanic barbarians were
making history" OF the Anglo-Saxon
Kingdoms in Britain only Kent was
officially at east-christianized, and
that for less than a quarter century.
In the rest. Odin and Thor still re-
ceived their sacrifices
Began With Mohammed
Curiously enough, while "Mansonia"
was putting forth its first shoot, there
was terminating in the east on the
Of hfa anofhar seed alec