Prof. Asa Gray on Sequoia aiid its History. 55 



fornia only — one in limited numbers in a few choice spots on 

 the Sierra Nevada, the other along the coast-range from the 

 Bay of Monterey to the frontiers of Oregon? Are they veri- 

 table Melchizedecs, without pedigree or early relationship, and 

 possibly fated to be without descent ? 



Or are they now coming upon the stage (or rather were 

 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 re- 

 stricted 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 California 

 — how that cattle and horses, introduced by the Spaniard, 

 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 exceeding tliose 

 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 manor born," but are self-invited intruders, 

 — we must needs abandon the notion of any primordial and 

 absolute adaptation of plants and animals to their habitats, 

 which may stand in lieu of explanation and so preclude our 

 inquiring any further. The harmony of Nature and its ad- 

 mirable perfection need not be regarded as inflexible and 

 changeless. Nor need Nature be likened to a statue or a cast 

 in rigid bronze, but rather to an organism with })lay and 



