212 DARWINIANA. 



drying of the climate, which must once have been 

 much moister than now, would precipitate its doom. 

 Whatever the individual longevity, certain if not speedy 

 is the decline of a race in which a high death-rate af- 

 flicts the young. Seedlings of the big trees occur not 

 rarely, indeed, but in meagre proportion to those of 

 associated trees ; and small indeed is the chance that 

 any of these will attain to " the days of the years of 

 their fathers." " Few and evil " are the days of all 

 the forest likely to be, while man, both barbarian and 

 civilized, torments them with fires, fatal at once to 

 seedlings, and at length to the aged also. The forests 

 of California, proud as the State may be of them, are 

 already too scanty and insufficient for her uses. Two 

 lines, such as may be drawn with one sweep of a brush 

 over the map, would cover them all. The coast red- 

 wood — the most important tree in California, although 

 a million times more numerous than its relative of the 

 Sierra — is too good to live long. Such is its value for 

 lumber and its accessibility, that, judging the future 

 by the past, it is not likely, in its primeval growth, to 

 outlast its rarer fellow-species. 



Happily man preserves and disseminates as well as 

 destroys. The species will doubtless be preserved to 

 science, and for ornamental and other uses, in its own 

 and other lands ; and the more remarkable individuals 

 of the present day are likely to be sedulously cared 

 for, all the more so as they become scarce. 



Our third question remains to be answered : Have 

 these famous Sequoias played in former times and up- 

 on a larger stage a more imposing part, of which the 

 present is but the epilogue ? We cannot gaze high up 



