speedy extinction, as being nothing more than an expiring remnant,
vanquished in the so-called struggle for life by pines and firs that
have driven it into its last strongholds in moist glens where climate is
exceptionally favorable. But the language of the majestic continuous
forests of the south creates a very different impression. No tree of all
the forest is more enduringly established in concordance with climate
and soil. It grows heartily everywhere--on moraines, rocky ledges, along
watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows, with a
multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged,
seemingly abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. For
every old storm-stricken tree, there is one or more in all the glory of
prime; and for each of these many young trees and crowds of exuberant
saplings. So that if all the trees of any section of the main Sequoia
forest were ranged together according to age, a very promising curve
would be presented, all the way up from last year's seedlings to giants,
and with the young and middle-aged portion of the curve many times
longer than the old portion. Even as far north as the Fresno, I counted
536 saplings and seedlings growing promisingly upon a piece of rough
avalanche soil not exceeding two acres in area. This soil bed is about
seven years old, and has been seeded almost simultaneously by pines,
firs, Libocedrus, and Sequoia, presenting a simple and instructive
illustration of the struggle for life among the rival species; and it
was interesting to note that the conditions thus far affecting them have
enabled the young Sequoias to gain a marked advantage.

In every instance like the above I have observed that the seedling
Sequoia is capable of growing on both drier and wetter soil than its
rivals, but requires more sunshine than they; the latter fact being
clearly shown wherever a Sugar Pine or fir is growing in close contact
with a Sequoia of about equal age and size, and equally exposed to the
sun; the branches of the latter in such cases are always less leafy.
Toward the south, however, where the Sequoia becomes _more_
exuberant and numerous, the rival trees become _less_ so; and where
they mix with Sequoias, they mostly grow up beneath them, like slender
grasses among stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy flood-soil I
counted ninety-four Sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch,
of ground once occupied by four large Sugar Pin