SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 213 



the huge and venerable trunks, which one crosses the 

 continent to behold, without wishing that these patri- 

 archs of the grove were able, like the long-lived ante- 

 diluvians of Scripture, to hand down to us, through a 

 few generations, the traditions of centuries, and so tell 

 us somewhat of the history of their race. Fifteen 

 hundi'ed annual layers have been counted, or satisfac- 

 torily made out, upon one or two fallen trunks. It is 

 probable that close to the heart of some of the living 

 trees may be found the circle that records the year of 

 our Saviour's nativity. A few generations of such 

 trees might carry the history a long way back. But 

 the ground they stand upon, and the marks of very 

 recent geological change and vicissitude in the region 

 around, testify that not very many such generations 

 can have flourished just there, at least in an unbroken 

 series. When their site was covered by glaciers, these 

 Sequoias must have occupied other stations, if, as there 

 is reason to believe, they then existed in the land. 



I have said that the redwoods have no near rela- 

 tives in the country of their abode, and none of their 

 genus anywhere else. Perhaps something may be 

 learned of their genealogy by inquiring of such rela- 

 tives as they have. There are only two of any partic- 

 ular nearness of kin ; and they are far away. One is 

 the bald cypress, our Southern cypress, Taxodium^ 

 inhabiting the swamps of the Atlantic coast from 

 Maryland to Texas, thence extending — with, probably, 

 a specific difference — into Mexico. It is well known as 

 one of the largest trees of our Atlantic forest-district, 

 and, although it never — except perhaps in Mexico, and 

 in rare instances — attains the portliness of its Western 

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