732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in California, and which our trustworthy paleontological botanist has 

 not yet had time to examine, we may expect to find evidence of the 

 early arrival of these two redwoods upon the ground which they now, 

 after much vicissitude, scantily occupy. Differences of climate, or cir- 

 cumstances of migration, or both, must have determined the survival 

 of Sequoia upon the Pacific ; very similar would seem to have been the 

 fate of a more familiar gymnospermous tree, the ginko or salistiria. 

 It is now indigenous to Japan only. Its ancestor, as we may fairly 

 call it, since, according to Heer, " it corresponds so entirely with the 

 living species that it can scarcely be separated from it," once inhab- 

 ited Northern Europe and the whole arctic region round to Alaska, 

 and had even a representative farther south in our Rocky Mountain 

 district. For some reason, this and glystrophobes survived only on 

 the shores of Eastern Asia. Libocearus, on the other hand, appears 

 to have cast in its lot with the Sequoias. Two species, according to 

 Heer, were with the ancient ones in Spitsbergen. Of the two now 

 living, one L. decurrens the incense-cedar is one of the noblest 

 associates of both the present redwoods ; the other is far south in the 

 Andes of Chili. The genealogy of the torreyas is more obscure ; yet 

 it is not unlikely that the yew-like trees, named taxides, which flour- 

 ished with the Sequoias in the Tertiary arctic forests, are the remote 

 ancestors of the three species of torreya, now severally in Florida, in 

 California, and in Japan. As to the pines and firs, these were more 

 numerously associated with the ancient Sequoias of the polar forests 

 than with their present representatives, but in different species, appar- 

 ently more like those of Eastern than of Western North America. 

 They must have encircled the whole polar zone then as they encircle 

 the present temperate zone now. 



I must refrain from all enumeration of the angiospermous or 

 ordinary deciduous trees and shrubs, which are now known by their 

 fossil remains to have flourished throughout the polar regions when 

 Greenland better deserved its name, and enjoyed the present climate 

 of New England and New Jersey. Then Greenland and the rest of 

 the north abounded with oaks, representing the several groups of 

 species which now inhabit both our eastern and western forest dis- 

 tricts ; several poplars are very like our balsam-poplar or balm-of- 

 Gilead-tree ; more beeches than there are now, a hornbeam, and a hop- 

 hornbeam, some birches, a persimmon, and a plane-tree, near repre- 

 sentatives of those of the Old World, at least of Asia, as well as of 

 Atlantic North America, but all wanting in California ; one juglans, 

 like the walnut of the Old World ; two or three grape-vines are near 

 our Southern fox-grape or muscadine, the other near our Northern 

 frost-grape; a tilia, very like our basswood of the Atlantic States, 

 only a liquidamber / a magnolia, which recalls our Magnolia grandi- 

 flora ; a liriodendron, sole representative of our tulip-tree ; and a sas- 

 safras very like the living tree. Most of these, it will be noticed, have 



