SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 143 



Passing on from the eastern district, marked by its equably 

 distributed rainfall, and therefore naturally forest-clad, I have 

 seen the trees diminish in number, give place to wide prairies, 

 restrict their growth to the borders of streams, and then dis- 

 appear from the boundless drier plains; have seen grassy 

 plains change into a brown and sere desert, — desert in the 

 common sense, but hardly anywhere botanically so ; have 

 seen a fair growth of coniferous trees adorning the more 

 favored slopes of a mountain range high enough to compel 

 summer showers ; have traversed that broad and bare elevated 

 region shut off on both sides by high mountains from the 

 moisture supplied by either ocean, and longitudinally inter- 

 sected by sierras which seemingly remain as naked as they 

 were born ; and have reached at length the westward slopes 

 of the high mountain barrier which, refreshed by the Pacific, 

 bear the noble forests of the Sierra Nevada and the Coast 

 Range, and among them trees which are the wonder of the 

 world. As I stood in their shade, in the groves of Mariposa 

 and Calaveras, and again under the canopy of the commoner 

 Redwood, raised on columns of such majestic height and ample 

 girth, it occurred to me that I could not do better than 

 to share with you, upon this occasion, some of the thoughts 

 which possessed my mind. In their development they may, 

 perhaps, lead us up to questions of considerable scientific 

 interest. 



I shall not detain you with any remarks — which would now 

 be trite — upon the size or longevity of these far-famed Se- 

 quoia trees, or of the Sugar Pines, Incense-Cedar, and Firs 

 associated with them, of which even the prodigious bulk of 

 the dominating Sequoia does not sensibly diminish the gran- 

 deur. Although no account and no photographic representa- 

 tion of either species of the far-famed Sequoia trees gives any 

 adequate impression of their singular majesty — still less of 

 their beauty, — yet my interest in them did not culminate 

 merely or mainly in considerations of their size and age. 

 Other trees, in other parts of the world, may claim to be older. 

 Certain Australian Gum-trees (Eucalypti) are said to be 

 taller. Some, we are told, rise so high that they might even 



