LUTHER BURBANK 
northern hemisphere was changing, has been out- 
lined in an earlier chapter. Could we know the 
details of the story, we should doubtless find that 
the ancestors of the Sequoia migrated southward 
before the chilling blasts of successive glacial 
epochs, and made their way northward again in 
the intervening periods. And of course the present 
age may represent merely another of these inter- 
glacial epochs, during which the Sequoia has 
carried its return march along the coast to about 
the fortieth parallel of latitude. It maintains in 
this location its proud position as the one cham- 
pion of the ancient traditions. And perhaps it will 
still maintain them in some remote epoch of the 
future when another ice age has driven man from 
the northern hemisphere and reduced the civiliza- 
tion of the twentieth century to a half-forgotten 
tradition. 
Be that as it may, the Sequoia and its daughter, 
the redwood, stand to-day as sister giants in an 
age of pigmies. Individual trees that are still 
young according to the reckoning of their tribe 
were gigantic centurions according to human esti- 
mates when Columbus discovered America. 
And Sequoias that are moderately old have 
witnessed the ceaseless change of the seasons since 
the period, perhaps, when Moor and Christian 
were battling for supremacy in Europe in the dark 
[272] 
