ery one is
awl-shaped--subulate. Woods have many odors--sickening, aromatic,
balsamic, medicinal. We go to the other side of the world to bring the
odor of sandal or camphor to our nostrils. But amid so many odors our
seed will make but one. It is resinous, like some of those odors the
Lord enjoyed when they bathed with their delicious fragrance the cruel
saw that cut their substance, and atmosphered with new delights the one
who destroyed their life. The big tree, with subtle chemistry no man
can imitate, always makes its fragrance with unerring exactness.

[Illustration: The Big Trees.]

There are thousands of seeds finished with a perfectness and beauty we
are hardly acute enough to discover. The microscopist revels in the
forms of the dainty scales of its armor and the opalescent tints of its
color. The sunset is not more delicate and exquisite. But the big
tree never makes but one kind of seed, and leaves no one of its
thousands unfinished.

The same is true of bark, grain of wood, method of putting out limbs,
outline of the mass, reach of roots, and every other peculiarity. It
discriminates.

But how does it build itself? Myriads of rootlets search the
surrounding country for elements it needs for making bark, wood, leaf,
flower, and seed. They often find what they want in other
organizations or other chemical compounds. But with a power of
analytical chemistry they separate what they want and appropriate it to
their majestic growths. But how is material conveyed from rootlet to
veinlet of leaf hundreds of feet away? The great tree is more full of
channels of communication than Venice or Stockholm is of canals, and it
is along these watery ways of commerce that the material is conveyed.
These channels are a succession of cells that act like locks, set for
the perpendicular elevation of the freight. The tiny boats run day and
night in the season, and though it is dark within, and though there are
a thousand piers, no freight that starts underground for a leaf is ever
landed on the way for bark or woody fiber. Freight never goes astray,
nor are express packages miscarried. What starts for bark, leaf,
fiber, seed, is deposited as bark, leaf, fiber, seed, and nothing else.
There are hundreds of miles of canals, but every boat knows where to
land its unmarked freight. Curious as is this work underground, that
in the upper air is more so. The tree builds most of its solid
substance from the mobil