592 SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 
—in the latter country along with the remains of another form, ; 
distinguishable, but very like the common species; and this has 
been identified by Lesquereux in the miocene of the Rocky 
Mountains. So there is one species of tree which has come down 
essentially unchanged from the tertiary period, which for a long 
while inhabited both Europe and North America, and also, at some 
part of the period, the region which geographically connects the 
two (once doubtless much more closely than now), but has sur- 
vived only in the Atlantic United States and Mexico. } 
The same. Sequoia which abounds in the same miocene forma- 
tions in Northern Europe has been abundantly found in those 
of Iceland, Spitzbergen, Greenland, Mackenzie River and Alaska. 
It is named S. Langsdorfii, but is pronounced to be very much like 
S. sempervirens, our living redwood of the Californian coast, and 
to be the ancient representative of it. Fossil specimens of a sim- 
ilar, if not the same, species have recently been detected in the 
Rocky Mountains by Hayden, and determined by our eminent 
paleontological botanist, Lesquereux ; and he assures me that he 
has the common, redwood itself from Oregon in a deposit of terti- 
ary age. Another Sequoia (S. Sternbergii) discovered in ana gt 
deposits in Greenland, is pronounced to be the representative of 
S. gigantea, the big tree of the Californian Sierra. If the T pr 
of the tertiary time in Europe and throughout the Arctic regions 
is the ancestor of our present bald cypress,— which is assumed . 
regarding them as specifically identical, — then I think we rad 
with our present light, fairly assume that the two redwoods: see 
California are the direct or collateral descendants of the te 
ancient species which so closely resemble them. nee “oe 
The forests of the Arctic zone in tertiary times con sal S 
least three other species of Sequoia, as determined by fe 
remains, one of which, from Spitzbergen, also much sore 
common redwood of California. Another, “which appears to g 
been the commonest coniferous tree on Disco,” was om 
England and some other parts of Europe. So the Sequoias, i oe 
remarkable for their restricted station and numbers, ey gee 
their extraordinary size, are of an ancient stock ; thet a ae 
and kindred formed a large part of the forests which which 
throughout the polar regions, now desolate and ice-clad, - m : 
extended into low latitudes in Europe. On this continent aA i 
cies, at least, had reached to the vicinity of its present B 
