68 Prof. Asa Gray on Sequoia and its History. 



dated with the ancient Sequoias of the poLir forests than with 

 their present representatives, but in different species, apparently 

 more like those of Eastern than of Western North America. 

 They must have encircled the polar zone then, as they encircle 

 the present temperate zone now. 



I must refrain from all enumeration of the ano-iospermous or 

 ordinary deciduous trees and shrubs which are now known by 

 their fossil remains to have flourished throughout the polar 

 regions when Greenland better deserved its name, and enjoyed 

 the present climate of New England and New Jersey. Then 

 Greenland and the rest of the north abounded with oaks, re- 

 presenting the several groups of species which now inhabit 

 both our eastern and western forest districts — several poplars, 

 one very like our balsam poplar or balm-of-Gilead tree — more 

 beeches than there are now, a hornbeam, and a hop hornbeam, 

 some birches, a persimmon, and a plane-tree, near represen- 

 tatives of those of the Old World, at least of Asia, as well as 

 of Atlantic North America, but all wanting in California — 

 one Juglans like the w^alnut of the Old World, and another 

 like our black walnut — two or three grape-vines, one near our 

 Southern fox grape or muscadine, the other near our Northern 

 frost grape — a Tilia very like our basswood of the Atlantic 

 States only, a Liquidamhar, a Magnolia which recalls our 

 M, grandijlora^ a Liriodendron, sole representative of our 

 tulip-tree, and a sassafras very like the living tree. 



Most of these, it will be noticed, have their nearest or their 

 only living representatives in the Atlantic States — and when 

 elsewhere, mainly in Eastern Asia. Several of them, or of 

 species like them, have been detected in our tertiary deposits 

 west of the Mississippi, by Newberry and Lesquereux. 



Herbaceous plants, as it happens, are rarely preserved in a 

 fossil state ; else they Avould probably supply additional testi- 

 mony to the antiquity of our existing vegetation, its wide 

 diffusion over the nortliern and now frigid zone, and its enforced 

 migrations under changes of climate. 



Concluding, then, as we must, that our existing vegetation, 

 as a whole, is a continuation of that of the tertiary period, may 

 we suppose that it absolutely originated then ? Evidently not. 

 The preceding Cretaceous period has furnished to Carruthers 

 in Europe a fossil fruit like that of the Sequoia gigantea of the 

 famous groves, associated with pines of the same character as 

 those that accompany the present tree — has furnished to Heer, 

 from Greenland, two more Sequoias, one of them identical with 

 a tertiary species, and one nearly allied to Sequoia Langsdorjii^ 

 which in turn is a probable ancestor of the common Californian 

 redwood — has furnished to Lesquereux in North America the 



