SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 233 



period, may we suppose that it absolutely originated 

 then ? Evidently not. The preceding Cretaceous pe- 

 riod has furnished to Carruthers in Europe a fossil 

 fruit like that of the Sequoia gigantea of the famous 

 groves, associated with pines of the same character as 

 those that accompany the present tree ; has furnished 

 to Ileer, from Greenland, two more Sequoias, one of 

 them identical with a tertiary species, and one nearly 

 allied to Sequoia Langsdorfii, which in turn is a prob- 

 able ancestor of the common Californian redwood; 

 has furnished to dewberry and Lesquereux in North 

 America the remains of another ancient Sequoia, a 

 Glyptostrobus, a Liquidambar which well represents our 

 sweet-gum-tree, oaks analogous to living ones, leaves 

 of a plane-tree, which are also in the Tertiary, and are 

 scarcely distinguishable from our own Platanus occi- 

 dentalis, of a magnolia and a tulip-tree, and "of a sas- 

 safras undistinguishable from our living species." I 

 need not continue the enumeration. Suffice it to say 

 that the facts justifiy the conclusion which Lesquereux 

 a scrupulous investigator has already announced : 

 that " the essential types of our actual flora are marked 

 in the Cretaceous period, and have come to us after 

 passing, without notable changes, through the Tertiary 

 formations of our continent." 



According to these views, as regards plants at least, 

 the adaptation to successive times and changed condi- 

 tions has been maintained, not by absolute renewals, 

 but by gradual modifications. I, for one, cannot doubt 

 that the present existing species are the lineal success- 

 ors of those that garnished the earth in the old time 

 before them, and that they were as well adapted to 



