miocene formations in Europe, has been specifically identified, first by Goeppert, then by Heer, with our common cypress of the Southern States. It has been found fossil in Spitzbergen, Greenland, and Alaskain 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 which has survived only in the Atlantic United States and Mexico.

The same Sequoia which abounds in the same mio. cene formations 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 similar, if not the same, species have recently been detected in the Rocky Mountains by Hayden, and determined by our eminent palæontological botanist, Lesquereux; and he assures me that he has collected in Raynolds and Hayden's Yellowstone and Missouri Exploring Expedition, 1859-1860," published in 1869; and an interesting article entitled "The Ancient Lakes of Western America, their Deposits and Drainage," published in The American Naturalist, January, 1871.

The only document I was able to consult was Lesquereux's "Re port on the Fossil Plants," in Hayden's report of 1872.

the common redwood itself from Oregon in a deposit of tertiary age. Another Sequoia (S. Sternbergii), discovered in miocene deposits in Greenland, is pronounced to be the representative of S. gigantea, the big tree of the Californian Sierra. If the Taxodium of the tertiary time in Europe and throughout the arctic regions is the ancestor of our present bald cypress-which is assumed in regarding them as specifically identical-then I think we may, with our present light, fairly assume that the two redwoods of California are the direct or collateral descendants of the two ancient species which so closely resemble them.

The forests of the arctic zone in tertiary times contained at least three other species of Sequoia, as determined by their remains, one of which, from Spitzbergen, also much resembles the common redwood of California. Another, "which appears to have been the commonest coniferous tree on Disco," was common in England and some other parts of Europe. So the Sequoias, now remarkable for their restricted station and numbers, as well as for their extraordinary size, are of an ancient stock; their ancestors and kindred formed a large part of the forests which flourished throughout the polar regions, now desolate and ice-clad, and which extended into low latitudes in Europe. On this continent one species, at least, had reached to the vicinity of its present habitat before the glaciation of the region. Among the fossil specimens already found in California, but which our trustworthy palæontological botanist has not yet had time to examine, we may expect to find evidence of the early arrival of these two redwoods

upon the ground which they now, after much vicissi tude, scantily occupy.

Differences of climate, or circumstances of migra tion, or both, must have determined the survival of Sequoia upon the Pacific, and of Taxodium upon the Atlantic coast. And still the redwoods will not stand in the east, nor could our Taxodium find a congenial station in California. Both have probably had their opportunity in the olden time, and failed.

As to the remaining near relative of Sequoia, the Chinese Glyptostrobus, a species of it, and its veritable representative, was contemporaneous with Sequoia and Taxodium, not only in temperate Europe, but throughout the arctic regions from Greenland to Alaska. According to Newberry, it was abundantly represented in the miocene flora of the temperate zone of our own continent, from Nebraska to the Pacific.

Very similar would seem to have been the fate of a more familiar gymnospermous tree, the Gingko or Salisburia. It is now indigenous to Japan only. Its ancestor, as we may fairly call it—since, according to Heer, "it corresponds so entirely with the living species that it can scarcely be separated from it"—once inhabited Northern Europe and the whole arctic region round to Alaska, and had even a representative farther south, in our Rocky Mountain district. For some reason, this and Glyptostrobus survive only on the shores of Eastern Asia.

Libocedrus, on the other hand, appears to have cast in its lot with the Sequoias. Two species, according to Heer, were with them in Spitzbergen. L. decurrens, the incense cedar, is one of the noblest

associates of the present redwoods. But all the rest are in the southern hemisphere, two at the southern extremity of the Andes, two in the South-Sea Islands. It is only by bold and far-reaching suppositions that they can be geographically associated.

The genealogy of the Torreyas is still wholly obscure; yet it is not unlikely that the yew-like trees, named Taxites, which flourished with the Sequoias in the tertiary arctic forests, are the remote ancestors of the three species of Torreya, now severally in Florida, in California, and in Japan.

As to the pines and firs, these were more numerously associated with the ancient Sequoias of the polar forests than with their present representatives, but in different species, apparently more like those of Eastern than of Western North America. They must have encircled the polar zone then, as they encircle the present temperate zone now.

I must refrain from all enumeration of the angiospermous or ordinary deciduous trees and shrubs, which are now known, by their fossil remains, to have flourished throughout the polar regions when Greenland better deserved its name and enjoyed the present climate of New England and New Jersey. Then Greenland and the rest of the north abounded with oaks, representing the several groups of species which now inhabit both our Eastern and Western forest districts; several poplars, one very like our balsam poplar or balm-of-Gilead tree; more beeches than there are now, a hornbeam, and a hop-hornbeam, some birches, a persimmon, and a planer-tree, near representatives of those of the Old World, at least of

Asia, as well as of Atlantic North America, but all wanting in California; one Juglans like the walnut of the Old World, and another like our black walnut; two or three grapevines, one near our Southern fox grape or muscadine, another near our Northern frostgrape; a Tilia, very like our basswood of the Atlantic States only; a Liquidambar; a magnolia, which recalls our M. grandiflora; a Liriodendron, sole representative of our tulip-tree; and a sassafras, very like the living tree.

Most of these, it will be noticed, have their nearest or their only living representatives in the Atlantic States, and when elsewhere, mainly in Eastern Asia. Several of them, or of species like them, have been detected in our tertiary deposits, west of the Mississippi, by Newberry and Lesquereux. Herbaceous plants, as it happens, are rarely preserved in a fossil state, else they would probably supply additional testimony to the antiquity of our existing vegetation, its wide diffusion over the northern and now frigid zone, and its enforced migration under changes of climate.'

Concluding, then, as we must, that our existing vegetation is a continuation of that of the tertiary

1 There is, at least, one instance so opportune to the present argument that it should not pass unnoticed, although I had overlooked the record until now. Onoclea sensibilis is a fern peculiar to the Atlantic United States (where it is common and wide-spread) and to Japan. Prof. Newberry identified it several years ago in a collection, obtained by Dr. Hayden, of miocene fossil plants of Dakota Territory, which is far beyond it present habitat. He moreover regards it as probably identical with a fossil specimen "described by the late Prof. E. Forbes, under the name of Filicites Hebridicus, and obtained by the Duke of Argyll from the island of Mull."