The elements to which the Sequoia is indebted for its great age are as enigmatic as they are controversial. Foremost of these is the tree’s intense desire to live. It seems never weary with the weight of years, and is blessed with a tenacity, a faith in life granted to no other living thing. From the finely interlaced network of its shallow root system to the utmost tip of every tiny needle, it displays a fervent love of life.[4] Indeed, there is a joy in noting the eager attitude of the foliage as it stretches out toward the light to gather the sunshine. Every unnecessary and useless branch is promptly discarded and the entire energy of the tree is devoted toward putting forth new foliage the better to capture the sunbeams. The altitude in which the Sequoia grows produces the loveliest verdure of the Sierras. All seems submersed in an ocean of sunlight. It is a region lifted above the thirsty foothills and yet far enough below the vacant solitudes of perpetual ice and naked rock to be free from the searing heat and dust of the former and the tragedy and wreck of the latter. John Muir so delighted in the “glorious floods of light” that pervaded this region that he referred to the Sierra, not as the snowy range, but the “Range of Light.” This abundance of sunshine, then, helps to explain the splendid conifers that the middle heights of the Sierra produce. The amount of solar heat sensibly affects the growth of trees. It is in the presence of sunlight that the green coloring matter in leaves is able to digest plant food. Yet this is not the all-important factor. Moisture plays a most potent role, also. The distribution of the lingering patches of the Sequoia reveals the powerful influence of moisture over the Big Tree. In the northern limits of its range, the Sequoia exists at a lower altitude (4,500 feet) where moisture is plentiful, while in the southern portion of the belt it climbs nearer the summit peaks (7,000 feet) where the drying heat of the San Joaquin plains is modified by elevation. The inexorable force exerted by moisture over the Sequoia is even better demonstrated by individual trees. All the better specimens are found growing in well watered places. Springs often bubble forth from the wide-spread masses of sponge-like Sequoian roots, indicative of the constant underground irrigation system that supplies the tree with mineral nutriment. The stunted are nearly always found growing in the dryer spots, looking very rusty but resolute; the thrifty tower about boggy meadows or along the drainage of water courses whose waters roar in their channels in flood time and trickle from pool to pool with faint murmur in Autumn after the azalea has bloomed and the mountain lilac has lost its badge of Spring.