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Show 208 DARWINIAN A. man' s a ddI' ng• That the more remarkabl.e of these trees should bear distinguishing appellatiOns seems proper eno Ugh ,. but the tablets o.f personal n.a m. es which are affixed to many of them In the most VISited groves-aS I'f the memory of more or le. ss notable people of our day might be ma~e endu~mg by the juxtaposition-do suggest some mcongrmty: When we consider that a hand's breadth at the mrcumfer-of any one of the venerable trunks so placarded ence . . f h . di has recorded in annual lines the hfetime o t e m - vidual thus associated with it, one may question hether the next hand's breadth may not measure the ;:me of some of the names thus ticketed for adventitious immortality. Whether it be the man or the tree that is honored in the connection, probabl_Y eitb~r would live as long, in fact and in mem?ry, wit~out 1~. One notable thing about the Sequoia-trees 1s therr isolation. Most of the trees associated with them are of peculiar species, and some of them are ne~rly ~s local. yet every pine,. fir, and cypress of Cahfo~·ma is in some sort familiar, because it has near relatives in other parts of the world. But the redwoods have none. The redwood_:_including in that name the two species of "big-trees"-belongs to the general Oyp:·ess family but is sui generis. Thus isolated systematically and extremely isolated geographically, and so wond~ rful in size and port, they more than other trees suggest questions. . Were they created thus local and lonely: .demzens of California only; one in limited numbers m a few choice spots on the SierraN evada, the other along the Coast Range from the Bay of Monterey to the fron- SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 209 tiers of Oregon~ Are they veritable Melchizedeks, without pedigree or early relationship, and possibly fated to be without descent ~ Or are they now coming upon the stage-or rather were they coming but for man's interference--=-to play a part in the future ? Or are they remnants, sole and scanty survivors of a race that has played a grander part in the past, but is now verging to extinction? Have they had a career, and can that career be ascertained or surmised, so that we may at least guess whence they came, and how, and when? Time was, and not long ago, when such questions as these were regarded as useless and vain-when students of natural history, unmindful of what the name denotes, were content with a knowledge of things as they now are, but gave little heed as to how they came to be so. Now such questions are held to be legitimate, and perhaps not wholly unanswerable. It cannot now be said that these trees inhabit their present restricted areas simply because they are there placed in the climate and soil of all the world most congenial to them. These must indeed be congenial, or they would not survive. But when we see how . the Australian Eucalyptus-trees thrive upon the Californian coast, and how these very redwoods flourish upon another continent; how the so-called wild-oat (A-vena sterilis of the Old World) has taken full possession of California; how that cattle and horses, introduced by the Spaniard, have spread as widely and made themselves as much at home on the plains of La Plata as on those of Tartary; and that the cardoon-thistle- |