206 On the Campus 



entire northern California coast, a region the species 

 might otherwise have occupied, since it does grow further 

 north when planted. The superseding species of red- 

 wood starts in at, say at Punta del Sur, fifty miles or so 

 down the coast, and runs northwest, just inland from the 

 species we are studying, and only a few miles away, on 

 Portland Creek, then on to Santa Cruz, just across 

 Monterey Bay and finally the coast range, not without 

 interruption, but all the way to Mendocino and further. 

 The only other sequoia took, on the return, the Mount 

 Whitney route, fills the Valley of the Yosemite and 

 King's River canons and has gotten north as far as the 

 Calaveras. Meantime two species of cypress seem to have 

 outstripped the sequoias, and axe found along the coast 

 beyond Mendocino, one species even in British America 

 sparsely but indiscriminately mingled with other con- 

 iferous trees ! 



But our Monterey cypress and our Monterey pine are 

 stranded, like other refugees of whom history tells a not 

 infrequent story; they became separate from their 

 brethren in the time of stress, and have remained an 

 isolated colony ever since. It seems that the retreat of 

 the glaciers in middle California was in some way ac- 

 companied or associated with diminished rainfall, or 

 snowfall, and the departure of the snows left Mount 

 Diabolo a desert on its western side, on both sides in 

 fact. Up the valley close behind the retreating forests 

 came the flora of the desert, waiting to entrap and utter- 

 ly supplant all stragglers, as wolves were wont to bring 

 down the straying deer. Our cypress trees are doomed ; 

 they have been left behind in the shifting of the ages 



