T e 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
_ Vol. VI.— OCTOBER, 1872.— No. 10. 
EELDAS 
SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 
AN ADDRESS BY PROF. ASA GRAY, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN 
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, 
DELIVERED AT THE MEETING HELD AT 
DUBUQUE, IOWA, AUGUST, 1872. 
Tue session being now happily inaugurated, your presiding 
officer of the last year has only one duty to perform before he 
surrenders his chair to his successor. If allowed to borrow a 
simile from the language of my own profession, I might liken the 
President of this association to a biennial plant. He flourishes 
for the year in which he comes into existence, and performs his 
‘appropriate functions as presiding officer. When the second year 
comes round he is expected to blossom out in an address and dis- 
appear. Each President, as he retires, is naturally expected to 
Contribute something from his own investigations or his own line 
of study, usually to discuss some particular scientific topic. 
Now, although I have cultivated the field of North American 
$ tany, with some assiduity, for more than forty years, have re- 
Viewed our vegetable hosts, and assigned to no small number of 
them their names and their place in the ranks, yet, so far as our 
own wide country is concerned, I have béen to a great extent a 
Closet botanist. Until this summer I had not seen the Mississippi, 
Ror set foot upon a prairie. 
To gratify a natural interest, and to gain some title for ad- 
dressing æ body of practical naturalists and explorers, I have made 
TONES Ad 
Entered accordi 
SCIENC ng to-the Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by the PEABODY ACADEMY OF 
CE, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. VI. 87 (577) 
