160 ESSAYS. 
Taxodium of the tertiary time in Europe and throughout the 
arctic regions is the ancestor of our present Bald Cypress, — 
which is assumed in regarding them as specifically identical, 
—then I think we may, with our present light, fairly assume 
that the two Redwoods of California are the direct or col- 
lateral descendants of the two ancient species which so closely 
resemble them. 
The forests of the arctic zone in tertiary times contained at 
least three other species of Sequoia, as determined by their 
remains, one of which, from Spitzbergen, also much resembles 
the common Redwood of California. Another, “ which ap- 
pears to have been the commonest coniferous tree on Disco,” 
was common in England and some other parts of Europe. So 
the Sequoias, now remarkable for their restricted station and 
numbers, as well as for their extraordinary size, are of an 
ancient stock: their ancestors and kindred formed a large 
part of the forests, which flourished throughout the polar re- 
gions, now desolate and ice-clad, and which extended into low 
latitudes in Europe. On this continent one species, at least, 
had reached to the vicinity of its present habitat before the 
glaciation of the region. Among the fossil specimens already 
found in California, but which our trustworthy palzontologi- 
cal 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 circumstances of migration, or 
both, must have determined the survival of Sequoia upon the 
Pacific, and of Taxodium upon the Atlantic coast. And still 
the Redwoods will not stand in the east, nor could our Taxo- 
dium find a congenial station in California. Both have prob- 
ably had their opportunity in the olden time, and failed. 
As to the remaining near relative of Sequoia, the Chinese 
Glyptostrobus, a species of it, and its veritable representative, 
was contemporaneous with Sequoia and Taxodium, not only 
in temperate Europe, but throughout the arctic regions from 
Greenland to Alaska. According to Newberry, it was abun- 
dantly represented in the miocene flora of the temperate zone 
of our own continent, from Nebraska to the Pacific. 
