SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 159 



The Taxodiura, which everywhere abounds in the miocene 

 formations in Europe, has been specifically identified, first by 

 Gceppert, then by I leer, with our common Cypress of the 

 southern States. It has been found fossil in Spitzbergen, 

 Greenland, and Alaska, — in the latter country along with the 

 remains of another form, distinguishable, but very like the 

 common species; and this has been identified by Lesquereux 

 in the miocene of the Rocky Mountains. So there is one 

 species of tree which has come down essentially unchanged 

 from the tertiary period, which for a long while inhabited 

 both Europe and North America, and also, at some part of 

 the period, the region which geographically connects the two 

 (once doubtless much more closely than now), but which has 

 survived only in the Atlantic United States and Mexico. 



The same Sequoia which abounds in the same miocene for- 

 mations in northern Europe has been abundantly found in 

 those of Iceland, Spitzbergen, Greenland, Mackenzie River, 

 and Alaska. It is named S. Longsdorjii, but is pronounced 

 to be very much like S. sempervirens, our living Redwood of 

 the Californian coast, and to be the ancient representative 

 of it. Fossil specimens of a similar, if not the same, species 

 have recently been detected in the Rocky Mountains by I lav- 

 den, and determined by our eminent palaeontological bota- 

 nist Lesquereux ; and he assures me that he has the common 

 Redwood itself from Oregon in a deposit of tertiary age. 

 Another Sequoia (£. Sternbergii^), discovered in miocene de- 

 posits in Greenland, is pronounced to be the representative of 

 S. gigantea, the Big Tree of the Californian Sierra. If the 



States. See especially Professor Newberry's Paper in the " Boston Jour- 

 nal of Natural History," vol. vii. No. 4, describing fossil plants of Van- 

 couver's Island, etc. ; his "Notes on the Later Extinct Floras of North 

 America," etc., in "Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History," vol. ix., 

 April, 1868 ; " Report on the Cretaceous and Tertiary Plants collected in 

 Raynolds and Hayden's Yellowstone and Missouri Exploring Expedition, 

 1859-1860," published in 1869 ; and an interesting article entitled " The 

 Ancient Lakes of Western America, their Deposits and Drainage," pub- 

 lished in "The American Naturalist," January, 1871. 



The only document I was able to consult was Lesquereux's Report on 

 the Fossil Plants, in Hayden's Report of 1872. 



