160 ESS A YS. 



Taxodium of the tertiary time in Europe and throughout the 

 arctic regions is the ancestor of our present Bald Cypress, — 

 which is assumed in regarding them as specifically identical, 

 — then I think we may, with our present light, fairly assume 

 that the two Redwoods of California are the direct or col- 

 lateral descendants of the two ancient species which so closely 

 resemble them. 



The forests of the arctic zone in tertiary times contained at 

 least three other species of Sequoia, as determined by their 

 remains, one of which, from Spitzbergen, also much resembles 

 the common Redwood of California. Another, " which ap- 

 pears to have been the commonest coniferous tree on Disco," 

 was common in England and some other parts of Europe. So 

 the Sequoias, now remarkable for their restricted station and 

 numbers, as well as for their extraordinary size, are of an 

 ancient stock : their ancestors and kindred formed a large 

 part of the forests, which flourished throughout the polar re- 

 gions, now desolate and ice-clad, and which extended into low 

 latitudes in Europe. On this continent one species, at least, 

 had reached to the vicinity of its present habitat before the 

 glaciation of the region. Among the fossil specimens already 

 found in California, but which our trustworthy palaeontologi- 

 cal botanist has not yet had time to examine, we may expect 

 to find evidence of the early arrival of these two Redwoods 

 upon the ground which they now, after much vicissitude, 

 scantily occupy. 



Differences of climate, or circumstances of migration, or 

 both, must have determined the survival of Sequoia upon the 

 Pacific, and of Taxodium upon the Atlantic coast. And still 

 the Redwoods will not stand in the east, nor could our Taxo- 

 dium find a congenial station in California. Both have prob- 

 ably had their opportunity in the olden time, and failed. 



As to the remaining near relative of Sequoia, the Chinese 

 Glyptostrobus, a species of it, and its veritable representative, 

 was contemporaneous with Sequoia and Taxodium, not only 

 in temperate Europe, but throughout the arctic regions from 

 Greenland to Alaska. According to Newberry, it was abun- 

 dantly represented in the miocene flora of the temperate zone 

 of our own continent, from Nebraska to the Pacific. 



