No review of the Mariposa giants would be complete without due mention of the Fallen Hero Tree, which was dedicated by the American Legion of California in the summer of 1921, to the Unknown Dead of the World War. Surely, no dedication could be more fitting, for nothing living is more monumental than the Giant Sequoia. Besides is it not better to preserve monuments than to build them? “Almost no structure,” declares Dudley, “erected by human hands has come down to us intact through the lifetime of a Sequoia; and few that we can admire which are hewn from inanimate marble or granite can be compared to a living organism vast in life and complete in the records of every year of its existence. An empire or republic may be compared with the life of this great tree, but what empire or republic has lived twenty-five centuries? None worthy of the name. Then, in the building of the Sequoia, no blood has been shed through all its twenty-five hundred years of life, no injustice or oppression have secured the means necessary for its construction, no hatred or strife has been engendered, no accident occasioning pain or suffering—no extinction of human life has left a stain on the history of its growth.” Again, from the standpoint of art and permanence, no dedication could be more appropriate. Few living things merit a higher place in art than the great Sequoia. It appeals to the highest intellectual and spiritual qualities of man. Of all trees it is the most dignified and majestic. After a shower its crown is oftentimes vested with a nameless light—a glory not of this earth—never seen on granite crag or marble temple. Then again no living thing is more enduring than the Sequoia. Tombstones that mark the graves of the known heroes will have become cornerless and the names they bear will have been obliterated by the elements; those who knew and loved the names will have run their brief course and be laid at rest, as will their children and many generations after them, before the Fallen Hero Tree ceases to transmit to the coming ages the memory of the Unknown Dead who fought, suffered, and died in the Great War.