Prof. Asa Gray on Sequoia and its History. 57 



will attain to "the clays 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 insuflficient for her uses ; two lines, such as may 

 be drawn with one sweep of a small 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 

 fur lumber and its accessibility that, judging the future by the 

 past, it is not likely in its primajval growth to outlast its rarer 

 fellow species. 



Happily man preserves and desseminates as well as destroys. 

 The species will probably be indefinitely 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 Avhich 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 

 through a few generations the traditions of centuries, and so 

 tell us somewhat of the history of their race. Fifteen hundred 

 annual layers have been counted, or satisfactorily made out, 

 upon one or two fallen trunks ; it is probable that close to the 

 heart of some of the living trees may be found the circle that 

 records the year of our Saviour's nativity. A few generations 

 of such trees might carry the history a long w ay back ; but 

 the ground they stand upon, and the marks of very recent 

 geological change and vicissitude in the region around, testify- 

 that not very many such generations can have flourished just 

 there, at least in an unbroken series. When their site was 

 covered by glaciers these Sequoias must have occupied other 

 stations, if, as there is reason to believe, they then existed in 

 the land. 



1 have said that the redwoods have no near relatives in the 

 country of their abode, and none of their genus anywhere else. 

 Perhaps something may be learned of their genealogy by in- 

 quiring of such relatives as they have. There are only two 

 of any particular nearness of kin ; and they are far away. One 

 is the bald cypress, our southern cypress ( laxodium), inhabiting 



