SEQUOIA AXD ITS HISTORY. 209 



tiers of Oregon? Are they veritable Melchizedeks, 

 without pedigree or early relationship, and possibly 

 fated to be without descent ? 



Or are they now coming upon the stage — or rather 

 were 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 1 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, wheu such questions 

 as these were regarded as useless and vain — when stu- 

 dents 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 legiti- 

 mate, and perhaps not wholly unanswerable. It can- 

 not 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 the Aus- 

 tralian Eucalyptus-trees thrive upon the California^ 

 coast, and how these very redwoods flourish upon 

 another continent ; how the so-called wild-oat (A vena 

 sterilis of the Old World) has taken full possession of 

 California ; how that cattle and horses, introduced by 

 the Spaniard, have spread as widely and made them- 

 selves as much at home on the plains of La Plata as 

 on those of Tartary; and that the cardoon-thistle- 



