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Show 212 DAR WINIANA. dry m· g of tl1 e climate' which must •o n. ce ha• ved been much mo1·s t er. than now, would preCip.i ta.t e. Its oom. Whatever the individual longevity, ce~tam If not speedy is the decline of a race in which a h~gh death-rate afflicts the young. Seedlings of the big .trees occur not rareI y, I· n deed , but in meagre proportwn to those of associated trees; and small indeed is the chance that any of these will attain to "the days of the years of their fathers." "Few and evil" are the days of all the forest likely to be, while man, both barbarian and civilized, torments them with fires, fatal at once to seedlings, and at length to the aged also. The forests of California, proud as the State may be of them, are already too scanty and insufficient for her uses. Two lines, such as may be drawn with one sweep of a brush over the map, would cover them all. The coast redwood- the most important tree in California, although: a million times more numerous than its relative of the Sierra-is too good to live long. Such is its value for lumber and its accessibility, that, judging the future by the past, it is not likely, in its primeval growth, to outlast its rarer fellow-species. Happily man preserves and disseminates as well as destroys. The species will doubtless be preserved to science and for ornamental and other uses, in its own and other lands ; and the more remarkable individuals of the present day are likely to be sedulously cared for, all the more so as they become scarce. Our third question remains to be answered: Have these famous Sequoias played in former times and upon a larger stage a more imposing part, of whi?h the present is but the epilogue ~ We cannot gaze high up SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 213 the ~uge and venerable trunks, which one crosses the contment to behold, without wishing that these patriarchs of the grove were able, like the long-lived antediluvians of Scripture, to band down to us, through a few generations, the traditions of centnries, and so tell us somewhat of the history of their race. Fifteen hundred annual layers have been counted, o; satisfactorily made out, upon one or two fallen trunks. It is probable that close to the heart of some of the Ii ving trees may be found the circle that records the year of our Saviour's nativity. A few generations of such trees might carry the history a long way back. But • the ground t~ey stand upon, and the marks of very recent geolo?wal change and vicissitude in the region around, testify that not very many such generations can have flourished just there, at least in an unbroken series. When their site was covered by glaciers, these Sequoias must have occupied other stations if as there · I.s reason to believe, they then existed in th' e 'l and. I have said that the redwoods have no near relatives in the country of their abode, and none of their genus anywhere else. Perhaps something may be l~arned of their genealogy by inquiring of such relatives as they have. There are only two of any particular nearness of kin; and they are far away. One is • the bald cypress, our Southern cypress Taxodium inhabiting the swamps of the Atlanti~ coast fro~ Maryl~nd ~o Texas, thence extending-with, probably, a specific difference-into Mexico. It is well known as one of the largest trees of our Atlantic forest-district ~nd, although it never-except perhaps in Mexico, and m r~re instances-attains the portiiness of its Western · 10 |