150 LUTHER BURBANK 



the Northern Hemisphere was changing, has 

 been outlined in an earlier chapter. Could we 

 know the details of the story, we should doubtless 

 find that the ancestors of the Sequoia migrated 

 southward before the chilling blasts of successive 

 glacial epochs, and made their way northward 

 again in the intervening periods. And of course 

 the present age may represent merely another of 

 these interglacial epochs, during which the 

 Sequoia has carried its return march along the 

 coast to about the fortieth parallel of latitude. 

 It maintains in this location its proud position 

 as the one champion of the ancient traditions. 

 And perhaps it will still maintain them in some 

 remote epoch of the future when another ice age 

 has driven man from the Northern Hemisphere 

 and reduced the civilization of the twentieth 

 century to a half-forgotten tradition. 



Be that as it may, the Sequoias stand to-day 

 as sister giants in an age of pygmies. Individual 

 trees that are still young according to the reckon- 

 ing of their tribe were gigantic trees when 

 Columbus discovered America. 



And Sequoias that are moderately old have 

 witnessed the ceaseless change of the seasons 

 since the period, perhaps, when Moor and Chris- 

 tian were battling for supremacy in Europe in 

 the dark age that preceded the segregation of the 



