SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 147 



least in the commonly visited groves Sequoia gigantea is in- 

 vested in its last stronghold, can neither advance into more 

 exposed positions above, nor fall back into drier and barer 

 ground below, nor hold its own in the long-run where it is, 

 under present conditions ; and a little further drying of the 

 climate, which must once have been much moister than now, 

 would precipitate its doom. Whatever the individual lon- 

 gevity, certain if not speedy is the decline of a race in which 

 a high death-rate afflicts the young. Seedlings of the big 

 trees occur not rarely, indeed, but in meagre proportion to 

 those of associated trees ; and small indeed is the chance that 

 any of these will attain to " the days of the years of their 

 fathers." " Few and evil " are the days of all the forest 

 likely to be, while man, both barbarian and civilized, torments 

 them with fires, fatal at once to seedlings, and at length to 

 the aged also. The forests of California, proud as the State 

 may be of them, are already too scanty and insufficient for 

 her uses. Two lines, such as may be drawn with one sweep 

 of a brush over the map, would cover them all. The coast 

 Redwood — the most important tree in California, although a 

 million times more numerous than its relative of the Sierra — 

 is too good to live long. Such is its value for lumber and its 

 accessibility, that, judging the future by the past, it is not 

 likely, in its primeval growth, to outlast its rarer fellow- 

 species. 



Happily man preserves and disseminates as well as destroys. 

 The species will doubtless be preserved to science, and for 

 ornamental and other uses, in its own and other lands ; and 

 the more remarkable individuals of the present day are likely 

 to be sedulously cared for, all the more so as they become 

 scarce. 



Our third question remains to be answered : Have these 

 famous Sequoias played in former times and upon a larger 

 stage a more imposing part, of which the present is but the 

 epilogue ? We cannot gaze high up the huge and venerable 

 trunks, which one crosses the continent to behold, without 

 wishing that these patriarchs of the grove were able, like the 

 long-lived antediluvians of Scripture, to hand down to us, 



