THE OLDEST THING ALIVE

HE General Sherman Tree is the oldest living thing. At the birth of Moses it was probably a sapling. Its exact age cannot be determined without counting the rings, but it is probably in excess of thirty-five hundred years. This looks back long before the beginning of human history. When Christ was born it was a lusty youth of 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.

THE GENERAL GRANT TREE Second in size and age only to the General Sherman Tree Photograph by W. L. Huber