SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 579 
older. Certain Australian gum trees (Eucalypti) are said to be 
taller. Some, we are told, rise so high that they might even cast 
a flicker of shadow upon the summit of the pyramid of Cheops. 
Yet the oldest of them doubtless grew from seed which was shed 
long after the names of the pyramid builders had been forgotten. 
So far as we can judge from the actual counting of the layers of 
several trees, no Sequoia now alive can sensibly antedate the 
Christian era. 
Nor was I much impressed with an attraction of man’s adding. 
That the more remarkable of these trees should bear distinguishing 
appellations seems proper enough: but the tablets of personal 
names which are affixed to many of them in the most visited 
groves,— as if the memory of more or less notable people of our 
day might be made more enduring by the juxtaposition,—do 
Suggest some incongruity. When we consider that a hand’s 
breadth at the circumference of any one of the venerable trunks 
so placarded has recorded in annual lines the lifetime of the indi- 
vidual thus associated with it, one may question whether the next 
hand’s breadth may not measure the fame of some of the names 
thus ticketed for adventitious immortality. Whether it be the man 
or the tree that is honored in the connection, probably either would 
-live as long, in fact and in memory, without it. 
One notable thing about these Sequoia trees is their isolation. 
Most of the trees associated with them are of peculiar species, 
and some of them are nearly as local. Yet every pine, fir, and 
cypress in California is in some sort familiar, because it has near 
relatives in other parts of the world. But the redwoods have none. 
redwood—including in that name the two species of ‘‘big-trees id 
—belongs to the general cypress family, but is sui generis. Thus 
isolated systematically, and extremely isolated geographically, and 
80 wonderful in size and port, they more than other trees suggest 
questions, 
Were they created thus local and lonely, denizens of California 
Only; one in limited numbers in a few choice spots on the Sierra 
Nevada, the other along the coast range from the Bay of Monterey 
to the frontiers of Oregon? Are they veritable Melchizedecs, 
without ae or early relationship, and possibly fated to be 
Without descen : 
Or are ca now coming upon the stage (or rather were they 
Coming but for man’s interference) to play a part in the future? 
