a fourth of an inch
long by three sixteenths wide, including a thin, flat margin that makes
them go glancing and wavering in their fall like a boy's kite. The
fruitfulness of Sequoia may be illustrated by two specimen branches one
and a half and two inches in diameter on which I counted 480 cones. No
other Sierra conifer produces nearly so many seeds. Millions are ripened
annually by a single tree, and in a fruitful year the product of one of
the northern groves would be enough to plant all the mountain-ranges of
the world. Nature takes care, however, that not one seed in a million
shall germinate at all, and of those that do perhaps not one in ten
thousand is suffered to live through the many vicissitudes of storm,
drought, fire, and snow-crushing that beset their youth.

The Douglas squirrel is the happy harvester of most of the Sequoia
cones. Out of every hundred perhaps ninety fall to his share, and unless
cut off by his ivory sickle they shake out their seeds and remain on the
tree for many years. Watching the squirrels at their harvest work in the
Indian summer is one of the most delightful diversions imaginable. The
woods are calm and the ripe colors are blazing in all their glory; the
cone-laden trees stand motionless in the warm, hazy air, and you may see
the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling
some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and ever and anon filling
the glens with his happy cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these
noble woods, and may oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or
resting wing-weary on some leafless twig; here also are the familiar
robin of the orchards, and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously
fitted for these majestic solitudes; and the Douglas squirrel, making
more hilarious, exuberant, vital stir than all the bears, birds, and
humming wings together.

As soon as any accident happens to the crown of these Sequoias, such as
being stricken off by lightning or broken by storms, then the branches
beneath the wound, no matter how situated, seem to be excited like a
colony of bees that have lost their queen, and become anxious to repair
the damage. Limbs that have grown outward for centuries at right angles
to the trunk begin to turn upward to assist in making a new crown, each
speedily assuming the special form of true summits. Even in the case of
mere stumps, burned half through, some mere ornamental tuft will try to
go aloft and do i