SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 215 



States, 1 and Glyptostrobus in China, which compose 

 the whole of the peculiar tribe under consideration. 



Note then, first, that there is another set of three 

 or four peculiar trees, in this case of the yew family, 

 which has just the same peculiar distribution, and 

 which therefore may have the same explanation, what- 

 ever that explanation be. The genus Torreya, which 

 commemorates our botanical Nestor and a former 

 president of this Association, Dr. Torrey, was founded 

 upon a tree rather lately discovered (that is, about 

 thirty-five years ago) in Northern Florida. It is a 

 noble, yew-like tree, and very local, being, so far as 

 known, nearly confined to a few miles along the shores 

 of a single river. It seems as if it had somehow been 

 crowded down out of the Alleghanies into its present 

 limited southern quarters ; for in cultivation it evinces 

 a northern hardiness. ' Now, another species of Torreya 

 is a characteristic tree of Japan ; and one very like it, 

 if not the same, inhabits the mountains of Northern 

 China belongs, therefore, to the Eastern Asiatic tem- 

 perate region, of which Northern China is a part, and 

 Japan, as we shall see, the portion most interesting to 

 us. There is only one more species of Torreya, and 

 that is a companion of the redwoods in California. It 

 is the tree locally known under the name of the Cali- 

 fornia nutmeg. Here are three or four near brethren, 

 species of the same genus, known nowhere else than in 

 these three habitats. 



1 The phrase " Atlantic United States " is here used throughout in 

 contradistinction to Pacific United States : to the former of course be- 

 long, botanically and geographically, the valley of the Mississippi and 

 its tributaries up to the eastern border of the great woodless plains, 

 which constitute an intermediate region. 



