224 TREE ANCESTORS 



Several of the fossil maples mentioned in these pages and repre- 

 sented by both leaves and fruits, and from widely scattered regions, 

 are shown in reduced size on the accompanying plate. Surely 

 botanists and tree lovers should not keep their attention so closely 

 focussed on the woods and flowers of the living world as to lose 

 sight of the dead world beneath their feet, which needs but under- 

 standing to make live again in all its ages old glory and impressive- 

 ness. The Pharoahs have long since been mummies. From the 

 standpoint of human history the Chaldeans and Assyrians belong 

 to an ancient world, and yet the maples along with most of our 

 forest trees are of a lineage so much more ancient as to scarcely be 

 intelligible or believable. Practically all of our forest trees go back 

 farther than we can trace the warm blooded animals that furnished 

 the stock out of which humanity arose in the late Tertiary, at 

 about the time that the most luxuriant and widespread forests of 

 the world were shrinking before those climatic changes that ushered 

 in the glacial period and shattered their unbroken and far flung 

 distribution. 



