- 
56 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 
in temperate Europe and America. One of the most remarkable of 
these is a species of Sequoia. So similar are the fossils to the species 
now living in California, that there is no doubt but that they are the 
ancestors of our living trees. It may seem strange to some, to call to 
mind the fact that California is at present the only place where these 
_ trees now grow, when we know that they once flourished over a much 
more extensive area. But when wesee the peculiar character of the 
California climate, when contrasted with that of Europe, Eastern North 
-America, and Eastern Asia, at the present day, we are forced to the 
conclusion, that in their present situation only have they found the 
necessary requisites of their growth. It is to be feared that these re- 
markable forms of vegetation, connecting links between the past and 
the present, are now on the highroad to extinction; and in a few more 
decades they will be almost unknown in a wild state, and exist in 
history as another example of the destructive powers of mankind.* 
The species of plants which are, according to Gray’s Manual of 
Botany, common to Europe and Northeast United States,f can be 
divided into four classes. First, the strictly Alpine species, found 
mostly on the highest summits of the White mountains, the Adiron- 
dacks, and in other elevated localities. The distribution of all these 
species, I believe to have been effected by means of the glacial period, 
as already explained (ante p. 54). The species are as follows : 
List No. I.—Strictly Alpine species, all having a north or north- 
westward range. 
/ 
1. Cardamine bellidifolia. ; 18. Castilleia pallida. 
2. Viola palustris. 19. Euphrasia officinalis. 
3. Silene acaulis. 20, Diapensia lapponica. 
4, Sibbaldia procumbens. 21. Polygonum viviperum. 
5. Potentilla frigida. | 22. Oxyria digyna. 
6. Saxifraga rivularis. 23. Empetrum nigrum. 
7. Saxifraga stellaris, var. comosa. | 24. Salix herbacea. 
8. Epilobium alpinum. 25. Luzula arcuta. 
9. Epilobium alpinum var. majus. 26. Luzula spicata. 
10. Gnaphalium supinum. 27. Juncus trifidus. 
11. Vaccinium uliginosum. 28: Scirpus czespitosus. 
12. Arctostaphylos alpina. 29, Carex scirpoidea. 
13. Cassiope hypnoides. 30. Carex capitata. 
14. Bryanthus (Phyllodoce) taxifo-| 31. Carex vitilis. 
lius. 32. Carex rigida. 
15. Rhododendron lapponicum. 33. Carex atrata. 
16. Loiseluiria procumbens. . 34. Phleum alpinum. 
17. Veronica alpina. 35. Agrostis Canina. 
* Address by Prof. A. Gray, before Am. As. Adv. of Science, 1872. Reprinted in Darwin- 
jana, p. 200. . 
+ All States north of Tennessee and North Carolina, and east of the Mississippi river. 
+ Pen we 
