52 TREE ANCESTORS 



With Lhe ushering in of the Eocene period the gigantic reptiles 

 are entirely replaced by higher types; small mammals, some races 

 of which soon attained great size, uncouth beasts long since passed 

 away, besides the remote and generalized ancestors of some of 

 our modern animals. It is in the rocks of this period that we find 

 the dainty little four-toed ancestor of the horse. The Eocene, 

 together with the next period, the OHgocene, represent a couple of 

 milHon years, during which the sequoias were almost as abundant 

 and widespread as are the pines in our existing flora. In the far 

 west this was a time of plains, rivers, and lakes, suggesting the 

 Louisiana country of the present. Sequoia cones almost identical 

 with those of the existing redwood are sometimes excessively 

 abundant where now the country is semi-arid and practically 

 treeless. 



Along with the sequoias were many hardwood trees — oaks and 

 maples, hickory and ash ; alligators pushed their way through the 

 sedges; the cypress and palmetto grew in Colorado, Montana, and 

 British Columbia. Stately palms furnished shade for primitive 

 rhinoceroses, tapirs and camels; around the water courses grew 

 swamp maples and alders, gum trees and mulberries; figs still 

 flourished in the latitude of Puget Sound. Monkeys swung from 

 branch to branch and gathered fruits, where today there is nothing 

 but the barren wastes of the alkali "bad-lands." 



The next period, the Miocene, withessed the zenith of sequoia 

 development. Contemporaneous with the tapirs, rhinoceroses, 

 horses, the trees ranged farther than their active associates and 

 are found from Tasmania (?) to Spitzbergen, and from Ireland 

 to Japan. Their remains are everywhere — in France, Italy, 

 Greece, America — they had even found their way across the equator 

 and down along the South American coast as far as Chile. 



In the Yellowstone region whole forests have been changed to 

 stone by the mineral waters, or buried in the showers of ashes from 

 the active volcanoes in the vicinity. The remains of the trunks 

 are still from 6 to 10 feet in diameter, and the erect butts are often 

 30 feet or more in height, standing just as they grew, a veritable 

 Aladdin's forest turned to stone. From a microscopic study of the 



