rmingly arrayed.
Innumerable insects begin to dance, the deer withdraw from the open
glades and ridge-tops to their leafy hiding-places in the chaparral, the
flowers open and straighten their petals as the dew vanishes, every
pulse beats high, every life-cell rejoices, the very rocks seem to
tingle with life, and God is felt brooding over everything great and
small.

BIG TREE
(_Sequoia gigantea_)

Between the heavy pine and Silver Fir belts we find the Big Tree, the
king of all the conifers in the world, "the noblest of a noble race." It
extends in a widely interrupted belt from a small grove on the middle
fork of the American River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of
about 260 miles, the northern limit being near the thirty-ninth
parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth, and the
elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about 5000 to 8000 feet.
From the American River grove to the forest on King's River the species
occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely distributed along the
belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty miles wide.
But from King's River southward the Sequoia is not restricted to mere
groves, but extends across the broad rugged basins of the Kaweah and
Tule rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly seventy miles, the
continuity of this part of the belt being broken only by deep canons.
The Fresno, the largest of the northern groves, occupies an area of
three or four square miles, a short distance to the southward of the
famous Mariposa Grove. Along the beveled rim of the canon of the south
fork of King's River there is a majestic forest of Sequoia about six
miles long by two wide. This is the northernmost assemblage of Big Trees
that may fairly be called a forest. Descending the precipitous divide
between the King's River and Kaweah you enter the grand forests that
form the main continuous portion of the belt. Advancing southward the
giants become more and more irrepressibly exuberant, heaving their
massive crowns into the sky from every ridge and slope, and waving
onward in graceful compliance with the complicated topography of the
region. The finest of the Kaweah section of the belt is on the broad
ridge between Marble Creek and the middle fork, and extends from the
granite headlands overlooking the hot plains to within a few miles of
the cool glacial fountains of the summit peaks. The extreme upper limit
of the belt is reached between the middle