582 SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 
“ Few and evil” are the days of all the forest likely to be, while 
man, both barbarian and civilized, torments them with fires, fatal 
at once to seedlings, and at length to the aged also. The forests 
of California, proud as the State may be of them, are already too 
scanty and insufficient for her uses. Two lines, such as may be 
drawn with one sweep of a small brush over the map, would cover 
them all. The coast redwood,— the most important tree in Cali- — 
fornia,— although a million times more numerous than its relative 
of the Sierra, is too good to live long. Such is its value for 
lumber and its accessibility, that, judging the future by the past, 
it is not likely, in its primeval growth, to outlast its rarer fellow- 
species. 
‘Happily man preserves and disseminates as well as destroys. 
The species will probably be indefinitely preserved to science, and 
for ornamental and other uses, in its own and other lands; and the 
more remarkable individuals of the present day are likely to be 
sedulously cared for, all the more so as they become scarce. = 
ur third question remains to be answered : Have these famous 
Sequoias played in former times and upon a larger stage 4 more 
imposing part, of which the present is but the epilogue? We cannot 
gaze high up the huge and venerable trunks, which one crosses - 
the continent to behold, without wishing that these patriarchs of 
the grove were able, like the long-lived antediluvians of sa 
to hand down to us, through a few generations, the traditions of , 
centuries, and so tell us somewhat of the history of their race. 
Fifteen hundred annual layers have been counted, or satisfactorily : 
made out, upon one or two fallen trunks. It is probable that oio 
to the heart of some of the living trees may be found the cina i 
records the year of our Saviour’s nativity. A few generhhom 
such trees might carry the history a long way back. But the groun 
ical change 
they stand upon, and the marks of very recent geologica 
and vicissitude in the region around, testify that not ve 
unbroken series. When their site was covered by : 
Sequoias must have occupied other stations, if, as there is } ‘ 
_ to believe, they then existed in the land. 
country of their abode, and none of their genus , fee 
Perhaps something may be learned of their genealogy PY ° ‘patio 
of such relatives as they have. ‘There are only two of BBY 
