Post 22504
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The most remarkable forest fire records that I ever saw were found in a giant California redwood. This tree was felled a few years ago. Its trunk was cut to pieces and studied by scientific men, who from the number of its annual rings found the year of its birth, and also deciphered the dates of the various experiences the tree had had with fire.
This patriarch had stood three hundred feet high, was sound to the core, and had lived through two thousand one hundred and seventy-one years. Its existence began in the year 271 B.C. After more than five centuries of life, in A.D. 245 it was in the pathway of a forest fire from which it received a bad burn on the lower trunk. It was one hundred and five years before this burn was fully covered with tissue and bark.
Following this fire came the peaceful procession of twelve centuries. Eleven hundred and ninety-six times the golden poppies came to glorify the green hills of spring, while the songs of mating birds filled woods and meadows. More than a thousand times the aspens ripened and scattered their golden leaves, while this serene evergreen grew and towered more and more noble through the centuries.