The San Francisco call., 1908-09-13
ST hday Gall


one of those rings corresponds year
filled with the yearnings and failures,
the struggles. designations and con-
quests that we call history.
Complete and precise information as
our sequoia gives us regarding its
growth of girth, it fails us completely
when we ask about its growth in
height. The only information it gives
us on this point is that it was little
over 800 feet when it was cut down.
Its rings tell us with accuracy its ra-
dial dimensions in any year; but for
its height at any time except at its
death VIC must fall back on conjecture.
Unfortunately that puts MS on thin ice.
For in the sequoia gigantea there is no
constant relation between age and
height. or age and girth. nor even be-
tween girth and height. John Muir, that
inspired and inspiring interpreter of
tree lore. has pointed this out
conclusively by many measurements
illustrating the INCONSISTENCY Thus
he found ore sequoia that had
grown up on the side of meadow
and had diameter of 10 feet to be
only 259 years old (Which. by the way,
was about the diameter of Mansonia az
that age) and another sequola Of the
same dimensions. but less favorably sit
uated, whose age was LAO years. One
young seQuoia inches in diameter and
p feet high was Sc years old. whereas
the age of another specimen of the
same height and even three inches
larger Niiameter MAS only %.
Considering the splendid size of our
tree-diameter somewhat and height
decidedly above the average, and that
= ,1,4
youth-for as ,sequoias go. Mansonia
was still in the heyday of lie when it
was felled-it seems plausible to sup
pose that its growth in height kept
pace with its pretty steady rate of in
crease in diameter: that at 200 years
old it had pushed beyond the 50 foot
mark; and at 500 was within 80 or IS
feet OF. its ultimate height. But these
ngufes are purely conjecturaL
aWhen Mansonia celebrated its first
centenary mere arrowhead stripping
of a sequoia, couple of feet thick, but
perhaps 100 tall, as many feet of
height as it had years-that Arab
seed was also giving a good account
of itself. Mohammedanism and the
caliphs of the Ommiad dynasty had
swept the Levant. Asia Minor. Arabia,
Persia, and were now pouring into
Gaul from Spain, which they had
wrested from the Visigoths And but
for the energy of Charles Martel and
the desperate bravery of the united
Christian armies, who stemmed the
MussuIman tide in the murderous bat
tie of Tours in 732. it would have gone
hard with the young Frankish king
dom and Aryan Europe in general.
Can you picture to yourself the Cal
averas grove on Christmas day, 500?
Some 1000 miles to the east, in eternal
Rome, Pope Leo is amounting Charles,
king of the Franks, and hands him
the crown that makes him emperor
and since even now there are many
people who have no idea of the mo-
mentous significance of that corona
ton, we need not wonder that many
did not grasp it then. And Mansonia
stands over ankle deep in snow, and
if it could think it would reflect that
it was only $50 years old and must
wait many more years before it could
have dome shaped crown and shaft
clean of branches up to a height of
$50 feet; which are the marks of the
full grown sequoia.
Comes the year A. D. 1000 Chris
tendon, above all the emperors, is hear
ing mass and doing penance, because
OF the approaching millennium. But
nothing happened, not even the small
est cataclysm; the earth kept on its
orbit and the threads ran on on the
loom of time-threads the historian
would have much less trouble in dis
,entangling, had his predecessors been
as truthful as Mansonia For which
lack he takes revenge by handing on
falsehoods to his successors
Before our sequoia's five hundredth
birthday, Norman William had made
himself king of England-to be precise,
il was 444 years old when Harold was
slain at Hastings; or Senlac, as Free
man has decreed. Thirty-three years
later Jerusalem was stormed by the
Crusaders under Godfrey de BouilIon
and sacked bly, also by the
Crusaders. Almost a century later,
during the third crusade. when Man
sonia was 571 and Richard Coeur de
Lion old enough to know better, he
picked that foolish quarrel with the
duke of Austria which cost him a
years sojourn in a German castle and
might have cost him his throne had
brother John been bigger man.
Full Height at Magma Charta
BY this time Mansonia is drawing
near its full height, but by comparison
the girth is of girlish slenderness.
The whole habitus of the tree-bark,
branches diameter and foliage-is still
that of the distinctly young. Again.