578 SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 
a pilgrimage across the continent. I have sought and viewed in 
their native haunts many a plant and flower which for me had long 
bloomed unseen, or only in the hortus siccus. I have been able to 
see for myself what species and what forms constitute the main 
features of the vegetation of each successive region, and record— 
as the vegetation unerringly does—the permanent characteristics 
of its climate. 
Passing on from the eastern district, marked by its equably dis- 
tributed rainfall, and therefore naturally forest-clad, I have seen 
the trees diminish in number, give place to wide prairies, restrict 
their growth to the borders of streams, and then disappear from 
the boundless drier plains; have seen grassy plains change 
into a brown and sere desert — desert in the common sense, but 
hardly anywhere botanically so; have seen a fair growth of conif- 
erous trees adorning the more favored slopes of a mountain 
range high enough to compel summer showers; have traversed 
that broad and bare elevated region shut off on both sides by high 
mountains from the moisture supplied by either ocean, and longt- 
tudinally intersected by sierras which seemingly remain as naked 
as they were born; and have reached at length the westward 
slopes of the high mountain barrier which, refreshed by the Pacific, 
bears the noble forests of the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range, 
and among them trees which are the wonder of the world. As I 
stood in their shade, in the groves of Mariposa and Calaveras, and 
again under the canopy of the commoner Redwood, raised on cok 
umns of such majestic height and ample girth, it occurred to. 
that I could not do better than to share with you, upon this sa 
sion, some of the thoughts which possessed my mind. In m 
development they may, perhaps, lead us up to questions of consi® 
erable scientific interest. 
~ I shall not detain you with any remarks (which 
trite) upon the size or longevity of these far-famed ai 
or of the sugar pines, incense-cedar and firs associa we 
of which even the prodigious bulk of the dominating Son i n 
not sensibly diminish the grandeur. Although no account pee : 
photographic representation of either species of the farat 
Sequoia trees gives any adequate impression of their pai iid ; 
majesty — still less of their beauty — yet my interest in ge a : 
not culminate merely or mainly in considerations of their § to be : 
age. Other trees, in other parts of the world, may es 
would now be 
Sequoia trees, : 
n 
