field, forming the inner of the two coastal ranges. Their fauna 

 is that of the peripheral parklands of the Sacramento valley. 



THE LAND OF LIVING FOSSILS 



Parallel to the Klamath complex and these low inland ranges, 

 and stretching from just south of Cape Blanco to Monterey Bay, 

 lie the great Redwood Forests, clothing a narrow, mountainous 

 strip facing the Pacific. The northern part of this strip is com- 

 posed of the Pacific slopes of the Klamath Ranges, which run 

 northwestward to the sea in echelon, but it is quite distinct (and 

 unique) as a vegetational subprovince, or rather a zone. This is 

 the last retreat of the mighty redwood trees (Sequoia semper- 

 virens) and is maintained by the warm mists and fogs that drift 

 in daily from the nearby ocean. Together with the Klamath- 

 Trinity complex, this land appears to be one of the "oldest" parts 

 of this continent. It has been under the sea, either as a whole or 

 in part, from time to time, and it was somewhat gouged by 

 mountain glaciers during the recent ice age but only to a very 

 limited extent. Yet it has apparently never been completely sub- 

 merged at the same time as all other surrounding bits of terri- 

 tory, so that it has acted as a sort of refuge for many things 

 from the past. 



The most obscure and least impressive of these is a strange 

 kind of smallish rodent known as the Sewellel or "Mountain 

 Beaver" (Aplodonta). It is a very primitive form of rodent with. 



as its scientific name states, simple teeth. It has no known near 

 relatives and is unique to this area, having its headquarters in 

 this subprovince but spreading north to the Chehalis River 

 divide; up the Cascades, probably to the Fraser; and south down 

 the Sierra Nevada. It is a compact creature with a large head, 

 small ears, very small eyes, and a tiny one-inch stump for a 

 tail. It is about a foot long and is clothed in dense, hard, brown 

 fur that becomes lighter in summer. It lives in lush growth, from 

 the lowlands to the tree line, and never strays far from water. 

 It digs holes and makes long passageways, some of which often 

 enter water and are flooded. Its food appears to be the leaves of 

 succulent plants and other herbage. It is a sort of left-over beast. 

 There are also found in these ranges both moles and shrews 

 of distinctive species. Among these is a curious animal known 

 as the Shrew-mole (Neurotrichus), an extremely ancient form of 

 mammal that has relatives only in the Far East of Asia. It is 

 intermediate between a mole and a shrew, having wide hands 

 with immense claws and a tail half as long as its head and body, 

 but narrow at the base rather than tapering like that of a mole. 

 It appears, indeed, that there has been land hereabouts for an 

 incredibly long time and that upon it have been preserved 

 certain types of plants and animals from what is called the 

 Mesozoic Age. the period when the dinosaurs predominated. 

 What is more, the nearest relatives of many of its inhabitants 

 turn up otherwise only in the western Chinese region. Some 

 years ago a tree related to the sequoias (and now named Meta- 

 sequoia or the "one like the redwood") was discovered in 



