42 TREE ANXESTORS 



have been found at almost every locality where later Mesozoic 

 fossil plants have been discovered. This is especially true of the 

 tiny cones, in fact the fossil cones of the sequoia were described 

 in Europe away back in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, 

 before the big trees of California had been discovered or described. 



The book of life which is the sedimentary rocks teaches us that 

 death has played sad havoc in their noble line and almost entirely 

 swept away their principality. Some have been dead about seven 

 million years, with thousands of feet of rock lying vertically over 

 their graves. Ever3avhere over the broad land areas of the North- 

 ern Hemisphere they are seen to have been replaced by other races. 

 But before turning to their ancestors let us take a glance at the 

 surviving heirs — the Kving trees. 



Their scientific name was formed from Sequoiah, the inventor of 

 the Cherokee alphabet. Popularly they are known as THE big 

 trees. There two species — the real giant. Sequoia washingtoniana, 

 sometimes called Sequoia gigantea, and sometimes Sequoia welling- 

 tonia, although the first name is the most appropriate for what 

 John Muir called "Nature's forest masterpiece;" and the red- 

 wood, Sequoia sempervirens. Barring the technical features which 

 amply distinguish the two they are superficially very similar, the 

 second seeming merely a slightly smaller edition of the first. Both 

 are evergreen with small leaves and small cones; columnar massive 

 trunks, buttressed below, and covered with a great thickness of 

 reddish fibrous bark — that of the redwood being a cinnamon red 

 and that of the big tree somewhat lighter in color. Both are culti- 

 vated as ornamental trees in temperate countries, especially in 

 central and southern Europe. 



The redwood occasionally occurs as pure stands on protected 

 flats and terraces along streams, in sheltered moist coastal plains 

 from southern Oregon to Monterey County, Cahfornia, near the 

 Pacific coast. More often it is found scattered among Douglas 

 fir, tanbark oak, and other species. It is closely confined to the 

 humid regions subject to frequent and heavy sea fogs. Like its 

 elder brother it is not at all tolerant of shade. The redwood pro- 

 duces a normal number of seeds but foresters have found that less 



