The Big-Tree groves, he says, are growing in the soil-areas off which the ice first melted at the close of the ice age. The wide gaps between the various sequoia groves were areas occupied by the large and long-enduring glaciers. The topography of the mountains plainly shows that the areas where the groves are were places protected from the ice-flows of the heights. The gaps would naturally have received the main ice-flows from the heights. In the south the Big-Tree forests are in the areas that were effectively buttressed and shielded from ice-flows. Consequently these areas were early opened at the close of the ice age. The forty-mile-wide gap between the Stanislaus and the Tuolumne Groves was a channel filled with a glacier probably long after the groves to the north and the south started to grow. Did the sequoia endure the long ice age in these few places where the groves are now growing? The pine, fir, spruce, and other forest species in the Sierra may have been planted with seeds from trees that survived in the south. But as the sequoia is found nowhere else, the question arises, did it survive somewhere near the localities in which it is now growing? An acquaintance with the Big Trees, an understanding of them, gives us one of the most impressive and lasting ties to be had in nature. These trees ever impress one with a nobility of character. Seen at midday, or at early morning when their lengthened shadow gives strange tones to the scene, or in the serene, strange moonlight, or when, wrapped in restless mist, they loom vast and mysterious, or in a storm, they are ever marvelously steadfast and calm. Long may they live! At the Big Trees, the first act of Horace Greeley, the celebrated editor, was to take out a pencil and figure on the lumber contents of one. These veteran trees have a higher value. Lincoln, in his lecture on Niagara Falls, said: "The mere physical fact of Niagara Falls is a very small part of the world's wonder. _Its power to incite reflection and emotion_ is its greatest charm." Lincoln might have calculated the mule-power of the Falls if ruined--changed from the higher value of a scenic spectacle to common commercialism. Why tell how many hovels or how many feet of sewer might be constructed out of the Library of Congress; or the number of cobblestones that could be manufactured from the Washington Monument? As well tell the number of forts that might have been built with the marbles and the energy that were put into statuary and the inspiring arts, as to consider or measure Big Trees in lumber terms. The sequoia is one of the monumental wonders of this round world. It is the oldest settler--the pioneer of pioneers. Each venerable giant numbers his years by centuries. Each was already old when nations of the present were born. Gone and forgotten are the nations that were--gone the flags that waved in the wind when these trees began to cast their shadows.