228 DARWINIANA. 



miocene formations in Europe, has been specifically 

 identified, first by Gceppert, then by Heer, with om 

 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 anoth- 

 er 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 geo- 

 graphically 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 mio • 

 cene formations in Northern Europe has been abun- 

 dantly found in those of Iceland, Spitzbergen, Green- 

 land, Mackenzie River, and Alaska. It is named S. 

 Langsdorfii, but is pronounced to be very much like 

 S. semper virens, our living redwood of the Calif ornian 

 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 

 Hayden, and determined by our eminent palseontologi- 

 cal botanist, Lesquereux ; and he assures me that he has 



collected in Raynolds and Hayden's Yellowstone and Missouri Explor- 

 ing Expedition, 1859-1860," published in 1869; and an interesting 

 article entitled "The Ancient Lakes of Western America, their De- 

 posits and Drainage," published in The American Naturalist, January, 

 1871. 



The only document I was able to consult was Lesquereux's " Re- 

 port on the Fossil Plants," in Hayden's report of 1872. 



