SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 583 
ular nearness of kin; and they are far away. One is the bald 
cypress, our southern cypress, Taxodium, inhabiting the swamps 
of the Atlantic coast from Maryland to Texas, thence extending 
‘into Mexico. It is well known as one of the largest trees of our 
Atlantic forest-district, and, although it never (except perhaps 
in Mexico, and in rare instances) attains the portliness of its 
western relatives, yet it may equal them in longevity. The other 
telative is Glyptostrobus, a sort of modified Taxodium, being about 
as much like our bald cypress as one species of redwood is like 
the other. 
Now species of the same type, especially when few, and the 
type peculiar, are, in a general way, associated geographically, i. e., 
inhabit the same country, or (in a large sense) the same region. 
Where it is not so, where near relatives are separated, there is 
usually something to be explained. Here is an instance. These 
four trees, sole representatives of their tribe, dwell almost in three 
Separate quarters of the world: the two redwoods in California, 
the bald cypress in Atlantic North America, its near relative, 
Glyptostrobus, in China. 
It was not always so. In the tertiary period, the geological 
botanists assure us, our own very Taxodium, or bald cypress, and 
a Glyptostrobus, exceedingly like the present Chinese tree, and 
more than one Sequoia, co-existed in a fourth quarter of the globe, 
viz., in Europe! This brings up the question: Is it possible to 
bridge over these four wide intervals of | space and the much 
vaster interval of time, so as to bring these extraordinarily sepa- 
tated relatives into connection. The evidence which may be 
brought to bear upon this question is various and widely scat- 
red. I bespeak your patience while I endeavor to bring to- 
gether, in an abstract, the most important points of it. 
Some interesting facts may come out by comparing generally 
the botany of the three remote regions, each of which is the sole 
ome of one of these three genera, i. e., Sequoia in California, 
Taxodium in the Atlantic United States, and Glyptostrobus in 
China, which compose the whole of the peculiar tribe under con- 
sideration, 
: Note then, first, that there is another set of three or four pecu- 
liar trees, in this case of the yew family, which has just the same 
Peculiar distribution, and which therefore may have the same expla- 
nation, whatever that explanation be. The genus Torreya, which 
commemorates our botanical Nestor and a former president of 
