Habitat Loss, Chopping The “Mother Of The Forest”

"'Mother of the Forest'—a giant sequoia tree 300 feet high, 92 feet in circumference and about 2,500 years old—is cut down for display in carnival sideshows. The tree was in Calaveras Grove, part of what will become Yosemite National Park. Public opinion is so aroused by the act that Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, called it 'vandalism' and 'villainous speculation.' Gleason's Pictorial, a popular Boston magazine, said, 'To our mind, it seems a cruel idea, a perfect desecration, to cut down such a splendid tree... what in the world could have possessed any mortal to embark in such a speculation with this mountain of wood?'"