SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 145 
they coming but for man’s interference —to play a part in 
the future ? 
Or are they remnants, sole and scanty survivors of a race 
that has played a grander part in the past, but is now verging 
to extinction? Have they had a career, and can that career 
be ascertained or surmised, so that we may at least guess 
whence they came, and how, and when ? 
Time was, and not long ago, when such questions as these 
were regarded as useless and vain, — when students of natural 
history, unmindful of what the name denotes, were content 
with a knowledge of things as they now are, but gave little 
heed as to how they came to be so. Now, such questions are 
held to be legitimate, and perhaps not wholly unanswerable. 
It cannot now be said that these trees inhabit their present 
restricted areas simply because they are there placed in the 
climate and soil of all the world most congenial to them. 
These must indeed be congenial, or they would not survive. 
But when we see how Australian Eucalyptus trees thrive upon 
the Californian coast, and how these very Redwoods flourish 
upon another continent; how the so-called Wild Oat (Avena 
sterilis of the Old World) has taken full possession of Cali- 
fornia; how that cattle and horses, introduced by the Span- 
iard, have spread as widely and made themselves as much at 
home on the plains of La Plata as on those of Tartary; and 
that the Cardoon-thistle seeds, and others they brought with 
them, have multiplied there into numbers probably much ex- 
ceeding those extant in their native lands; indeed, when we 
contemplate our own race, and our own particular stock, taking 
such recent but dominating possession of this New World; 
when we consider how the indigenous flora of islands generally 
succumbs to the foreigners which come in the train of man; 
and that most weeds (i. e., the prepotent plants in open soil) 
of all temperate climates are not “to the manner born,” but 
are self-invited intruders, — we must needs abandon the notion 
of any primordial and absolute adaptation of plants and ani- 
mals to their habitats, which may stand in lieu of explanation, 
and so preclude our inquiring any further. The harmony of 
Nature and its admirable perfection need not be regarded as 
