Nearly all the other Sequoias of the Grove have had their perfection marred by three agents of destruction—time, fire, and man. The remarkable manner in which they have triumphed over their destroyers makes them unique among trees. Seared, scarred, and mutilated all their lives, they have carried on in their great, patient, rugged fashion. Accidents seem unable to disturb more than momentarily their peaceful way. Calamities that would vanquish other trees only serve to quicken their hardy, tenacious growth. Almost invincible, they appear to know neither despair nor defeat. Even when overthrown by the combined strength of the elements of heaven and earth, though uprooted and prostrate, they refuse to perish utterly. Would that man had the stamina of the Sequoia. Time has not laid a heavy hand on the Sequoia. On all living things it leaves its trace. But never within the compass of human reckoning has time alone been able to take off a Sequoia. Fire must first prepare the way by eating through the center of gravity of its trunk. Then, and only then, are the tempests able to overthrow it. This is because the scanty foliage of the tree never makes for top-heaviness. One of the most interesting habits of the Sequoia is the pruning of its own top. Unnecessary limbs are rarely retained. Not infrequently in Sequoian groves when there is neither wind nor other apparent cause, a crash in the night is heard and at dawn the ruins of a limb are found beneath one of the Giants. Evidently the Sequoia knows that a tree which carries its crown two hundred and fifty feet above its base cannot wrestle with the fury of the winds under full sail. Consequently, it is only after fire has deflected one of these columns from its plumbline and when the mass of earth about its roots has been softened by rain or snow, that the gales succeed in prostrating the Sequoia. The Fallen Monarch and the Fallen Giant are the two most noted of this category in the Mariposa Grove. The former, when standing in the full glory of prime, must have been the equal of the largest of the lordly monarchs of today. Its bark gone, its sap-wood decayed, its base badly fire-scarred, it still measures over 85 feet in circumference. But for all its great size, its refusal to perish is even more wonderful. It is not a mouldering mass which tourists can idly kick about, but a solid trunk whose wood is as firm and sound as on the day the tree fell to earth. How long the bleached ruin of a tree may have lain on the forest floor is mere conjecture. How old this monarch was before its fall is an equally fascinating speculation. It may be that the circling sun looked down upon it as a graceful sapling when Cheops raised the Pyramids on the plains of Gizeh. Nor are these vast, unmeaning, sepulchral piles erected to the great who exhausted the splendor of Egypt in their building, apparently more enduring than this decumbent monarch.