Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1903 — MIGHTY TREES OF SIERRA. [ARTICLE]

MIGHTY TREES OF SIERRA.

Grvatrat In Size of All Creation* of the Living World. During all the ages nature has favored the growth of forests on the Pacific mountains, providing the peculiar conditions which make them far different from, greater in size, more luxuriant, than any other in the world. Of all the creations of the living world none is so great in size, so majestic in presence, as the mighty trees of the Sierra and the Cascades. For here the. air is always fertile ' with moisture,, clouds blown In from the Pacific ocean rest among the mountain summits, evetx crowning the tops of the trees themselves, and here discharge their rainThe soil is deep and spongy with centuries of decomposing vegetable matter, furnishing an unequaled nurturing place for vegetation, and there are- no extremes of heat in summer or depth* of cold in winter, says the Century Magazine. Every condition has been favorable to unexampled exuberance of growth 1 not only of the largest trees, but of air manner of undergrowth, vine, shrub and brake. A huge tree falls, decays and is yellowed with thick moss. Immediately scores of young firs and cedars spring up along the top of it—the first chance of n hare spot in the wood. Old burned stumps, gathering soil im* their hollow interiors, nre nurseries forcolonies of young trees, some strong individual finally shouldering out the others, growing larger, and, as the' mother stump drops away, sending its roots downward into the earth through the disintegrating textures until it in time becomes a great tree.