OF the thousands, perhaps millions, of sequoia trees, old and young, twelve thousand exceed ten feet in diameter. Muir states that a diameter of twenty feet and a height of two hundred and seventy-five is perhaps the average for mature and favorably situated trees, while trees twenty-five feet in diameter and approaching three hundred in height are not rare.

But the greatest trees have these astonishing dimensions:

General Sherman: Height, 273.9 feet; base diameter, 37.3 feet; diameter above bulge, 22.1 feet.

General Grant: Height, 266.6 feet; base diameter, 40.3 feet; diameter above bulge, 21.7 feet.

Abraham Lincoln: Diameter, 31 feet; height, 270 feet.

California: Diameter, 30 feet; height, 260 feet.

George Washington: Diameter, 29 feet; height, 255 feet.

A little effort will help you realize these dimensions. Measure and stake in front of a church the diameter of the General Sherman Tree. Then stand back a distance equal to the tree's height. Raise your eyes slowly and imagine this huge trunk rising in front of the church. When you reach a point in the sky forty-five degrees up from the spot on which you stand, you will have the tree's height were it growing in front of your church.

THE General Sherman Tree is perhaps the oldest living thing. At the birth of Moses it was probably a sapling. Its exact age can not be determined without counting the rings, bu it is probably in excess of thirty-five hundred years and may be over five thousand years. When Christ was born it was a lusty youth of at least fifteen hundred summers.

There are many thousands of trees in the Sequoia National Park which were growing thriftily when Christ was born; hundreds which were flourishing while Babylon was in its prime; several which antedated the pyramids on the Egyptian desert.

John Muir counted four thousand rings on one prostrate giant. This tree probably sprouted while the Tower of Babel was still standing.

The sequoia is regular and symmetrical in general form. Its powerful, stately trunk is purplish to cinnamon brown and rises without a branch a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet—which is as high or higher than the tops of most forest trees. Its bulky limbs shoot boldly out on every side. Its foliage, the most feathery and delicate of all the conifers, is densely massed.

The wood is almost indestructible except by fire.