IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
25 
delimitation. Between the Monterey pine and the cypress the line of 
demarcation is, as noted, one of altitude chiefly. 
All North American cypresses are interesting in distribution. They 
are all littoral species: they fringe the continent. Along the Pacific 
shore half a dozen rare and curious pines, as here, join with the cypresses 
in such select behavior. But the meaning of this rarity, this aloofness, 
lies no doubt in the changing topography and meteorology of the past, 
and shall become evident only as the geologist and the botanist, in 
presence of a wider survey than either possibly has yet attained, reason 
together and so reconstruct and make to live again these later chapters 
in the history of the world. 
