66 Prof. Asa Gray on Sequoia and its History. 



regions could be ascertained, my whole case would be made 

 out. The needful facts, of which I was ignorant when my 

 essay was published, have now been for some years made 

 known, thanks mainly to the researches of Heer upon ample 

 collections of arctic fossil plants. These are confirmed and 

 extended through new investigations by Heer and Lesque- 

 reux, the results of which have been indicated to me by the 

 latter. 



The Taxodimn which everywhere abounds in the miocene 

 formations in Europe, has been specifically identified, first 

 by Goeppert, then by Heer, 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 

 Em-ope and North America, and also at some part &f the 

 period the region which geographically connects the two (once 

 doubtless much more closely than now), but has survived only 

 in the Atlantic United States and Mexico. 



The same Sequoia which abounds in the same miocene for- 

 mations in Northern Em-ope has been abundantly found in 

 those of Iceland, Spitzbergen, Greenland, Mackenzie river, and 

 Alaska. It is named S. Langsdorffii^ but is pronounced to be 

 vei-y 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 

 been recently detected in the Eocky Mountains by Hayden, 

 and determined by our eminent pateontological botanist, Les- 

 quereux ; and he assures, me that he has the common redwood 

 itself from Oregon, in a deposit of tertiary age. Another 

 Sequoia {S. Sternhergii) , discovered in miocene deposits in 

 Greenland, is pronounced to be the representative of S. gigan- 

 tea^ the big tree of the Californian sierra. If the Taxodium 

 of tertiary time in Europe and throughout the arctic regions 

 is tlie ancestor of om- 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 red- 

 woods of California are the direct or collateral descendents 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 re- 

 mains, one of which, from Spitzbergen, also much resembles the 

 common redwood of California. Another, " which appears to 



