586 SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 
sassafras, nor to benzoin tree, nor to hickory ; neither mulberry nor 
elm ; no beech, true chestnut, hornbeam, nor ironwood, nor a proper 
birch tree; and the enumeration might. be continued very much 
further by naming herbaceous plants and others familiar only to 
botanists. 
In their place California is filled with plants of other types, — 
trees, shrubs and herbs, of which I will only remark that they are, 
with one or two exceptions, as different from the plants of the east- 
ern Asiatic region with which we are concerned (Japan, China and 
Mandchuria), as they are from those of Atlantic North America. 
Their near relatives, when they have any in other lands, are mostly 
southward, on the Mexican plateau, or many as far south as Chili. 
he same may be said of the plants of the intervening great 
plains, except that northward and in the subsaline vegetation there 
are some close alliances with the flora of the steppes of Siberia. 
And along the crests of high mountain ranges the aretic-alpine 
flora has sent southward more or less numerous representatives 
through the whole length of the country. ‘ 
f we now compare, as to their flora generally, the Atlantic 
United States with Japan, Mandchuria, and Northern China, t ¢» 
stern North America with Eastern North Asia — half "e 
earth’s circumference apart—we find an astonishing similarity. 
The larger part of the genera of our own region, which I have ent- 
merated as wanting in California, are present in Japan or Mand- 
churia, along with many other peculiar plants, divided between w 
two. There are plants enough of the one region which have n0 
representatives in the other. There are types which appear to 
haye reached the Atlantic States from the south; and there 18 a 
larger infusion of subtropical Asiatic types into temperate Chis 
: $ : n the two 
and Japan ; among these there is no relationship between ts : 
countries to speak of. There are also, as I have already said, no 
small number of genera and some species which, being = 
all round or partly round the northern temperate zone, have Ris 
special significance because of their occurrence in these two E7 = 
podal floras, although they have testimony to bear upon the o : | 
question of geographical distribution. ‘The point to beremarket © 
that many or even most of the genera and species which 7 - 
liar to North America as compared with Europe, pi Califor- o 
peculiar to Atlantic North America as compared with the either 
nian region, are also represented in Japan and Mandchuria, ae 
