SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 145 



they coming but for man's interference — to play a part in 

 the future ? 



Or are they remnants, sole and scanty survivors of a race 

 that has played a grander part in the past, but is now verging 

 to extinction ? Have they had a career, and can that career 

 be ascertained or surmised, so that we may at least guess 

 whence they came, and how, and when ? 



Time was, and not long ago, when such questions as these 

 were regarded as useless and vain, — when students of natural 

 history, unmindful of what the name denotes, were content 

 with a knowledge of things as they now are, but gave little 

 heed as to how they came to be so. Now, such questions are 

 held to be legitimate, and perhaps not wholly unanswerable. 

 It cannot now be said that these trees inhabit their present 

 restricted areas simply because they are there placed in the 

 climate and soil of all the world most congenial to them. 

 These must indeed be congenial, or they would not survive. 

 But when we see how Australian Eucalyptus trees thrive upon 

 the Californian coast, and how these very Redwoods flourish 

 upon another continent ; how the so-called Wild Oat (Avena 

 sterilis of the Old World) has taken full possession of Cali- 

 fornia ; how that cattle and horses, introduced by the Span- 

 iard, have spread as widely and made themselves as much at 

 home on the plains of La Plata as on those of Tartary ; and 

 that the Cardoon-thistle seeds, and others they brought with 

 them, have multiplied there into numbers probably much ex- 

 ceeding those extant in their native lands ; indeed, when we 

 contemplate our own race, and our own particular stock, taking 

 such recent but dominating possession of this New World ; 

 when we consider how the indigenous flora of islands generally 

 succumbs to the foreigners which come in the train of man ; 

 and that most weeds (i. e., the prepotent plants in open soil) 

 of all temperate climates are not " to the manner born," but 

 are self-invited intruders, — we must needs abandon the notion 

 of any primordial and absolute adaptation of plants and ani- 

 mals to their habitats, which may stand in lieu of explanation, 

 and so preclude our inquiring any further. The harmony of 

 Nature and its admirable perfection need not be regarded as 



