SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 159 
The Taxodium, which everywhere abounds in the miocene 
formations in Europe, has been specifically identified, first by 
Geppert, then by Heer, with our common Cypress of the 
southern States. It has been found fossil in Spitzbergen, 
Greenland, and Alaska, — in the latter country along with the 
remains of another form, distinguishable, but very like the 
common species ; and this has been identified by Lesquereux 
in the miocene of the Rocky Mountains. So there is one 
species of tree which has come down essentially unchanged 
from the tertiary period, which for a long while inhabited 
both Europe and North America, and also, at some part of 
the period, the region which geographically connects the two 
(once doubtless much more closely than now), but which has 
survived only in the Atlantic United States and Mexico. 
The same Sequoia which abounds in the same miocene for- 
mations in northern Europe has been abundantly found in 
those of Iceland, Spitzbergen, Greenland, Mackenzie River, 
and Alaska. It is named S. Longsdorfii, but is pronounced 
to be very much like S. sempervirens, our living Redwood of 
the Californian coast, and to be the ancient representative 
of it. Fossil specimens of a similar, if not the same, species 
have recently been detected in the Rocky Mountains by Hay- 
den, and determined by our eminent paleontological bota- 
nist Lesquereux ; and he assures me that he has the common 
Redwood itself from Oregon in a deposit of tertiary age. 
Another Sequoia (S. Sternbergii), discovered in miocene de- 
posits in Greenland, is pronounced to be the representative of 
S. gigantea, the Big Tree of the Californian Sierra. If the 
States. See especially Professor Newberry’s Paper in the “ Boston Jour- 
nal of Natural History,” vol. vii. No. 4, describing fossil plants of Van- 
couver’s Island, ete. ; his “ Notes on the Later Extinct Floras of North 
America,” ete., in ‘* Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History,” vol. ix., 
April, 1868 ; “ Report on the Cretaceous and Tertiary Plants collected in 
Raynolds and Hayden’s Yellowstone and Missouri Exploring Expedition, 
1859-1860,” published in 1869 ; and an interesting article entitled “ The 
Ancient Lakes of Western America, their Deposits and Drainage,” pub- 
lished in “The American Naturalist,” January, 1871. 
The only document I was able to consult was Lesquereux’s Report on 
the Fossil Plants, in Hayden’s Report of 1872. 
