ndividuals, and that they may be verging to extinction. But the verge
of a period beginning in cretaceous times may have a breadth of tens of
thousands of years, not to mention the possible existence of conditions
calculated to multiply and re-extend both species and individuals.

There is no absolute limit to the existence of any tree. Death is due to
accidents, not, as that of animals, to the wearing out of organs. Only
the leaves die of old age. Their fall is foretold in their structure;
but the leaves are renewed every year, and so also are the essential
organs wood, roots, bark, buds. Most of the Sierra trees die of disease,
insects, fungi, etc., but nothing hurts the big tree. I never saw one
that was sick or showed the slightest sign of decay. Barring accidents,
it seems to be immortal. It is a curious fact that all the very old
sequoias had lost their heads by lightning strokes. "All things come to
him who waits." But of all living things, sequoia is perhaps the only
one able to wait long enough to make sure of being struck by lightning.

So far as I am able to see at present only fire and the ax threaten the
existence of these noblest of God's trees. In Nature's keeping they
are safe, but through the agency of man destruction is making rapid
progress, while in the work of protection only a good beginning has been
made. The Fresno grove, the Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa groves are
under the protection of the Federal Government in the Yosemite National
Park. So are the General Grant and Sequoia National Parks; the latter,
established twenty-one years ago, has an area of 240 square miles and is
efficiently guarded by a troop of cavalry under the direction of the
Secretary of the Interior; so also are the small General Grant National
Park, estatblished at the same time with an area of four square miles,
and the Mariposa grove, about the same size and the small Merced and
Tuolumne group. Perhaps more than half of all the big trees have been
thoughtlessly sold and are now in the hands of speculators and mill men.
It appears, therefore, that far the largest and important section of
protected big trees is in the great Sequoia National Park, now easily
accessible by rail to Lemon Cove and thence by a good stage road into
the giant forest of the Kaweah and thence by rail to other parts of the
park; but large as it is it should be made much larger. Its natural
eastern boundary is the High Sierra and the northern and south