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It has been found fossil in Spitzbergen, Greenland, and Alaska in 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.
The preceding Cretaceous period has furnished to Carruthers in Europe a fossil fruit like that of the Sequoia gigantea of the famous groves, associated with pines of the same character as those that accompany the present tree; has furnished to Heer, from Greenland, two more Sequoias, one of them identical with a tertiary species, and one nearly allied to Sequoia Langsdorfii, which in turn is a probable ancestor of the common California redwood; has furnished to Newberry and Lesquereux in North America the remains of another ancient Sequoia, a Glyptostrobus, a Liquidambar which well represents our sweet-gum-tree, oaks analogous to living ones, leaves of a plane-tree, which are also in the Tertiary, and are scarcely distinguishable from our own Platanus occidentalis, of a magnolia and a tulip-tree, and "of a sassafras undistinguishable from our living species."
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. Evidently not.
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 palaeontological botanist, Lesquereux; and he assures me that he has the common redwood itself from Oregon in a deposit of tertiary age.
Lesquereux, the head of paleontological botany in this country; M. Jules Marcou, the geologist; and M. de Pourtales, under whose care the collection of corals was constantly improved and enlarged. The last named became at last wholly attached to the Museum, sharing its administration with Alexander Agassiz after his father's death. To this band of workers some accessions had recently been made.
But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed, they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the species is probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the vast antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in species and individuals, comparing our Sierra Giant and Sequoia sempervirens of the Coast Range, the only other living species of sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and described by Heer and Lesquereux, some of which flourished over vast areas in the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories, during tertiary and cretaceous times then, indeed, it becomes plain that our two surviving species, restricted to narrow belts within the limits of California, are mere remnants of the genus, both as to species and individuals, and that they may be verging to extinction.
I need not continue the enumeration. Suffice it to say that the facts justify the conclusion which Lesquereux a scrupulous investigator has already announced: that "the essential types of our actual flora are marked in the Cretaceous period, and have come to us after passing, without notable changes, through the Tertiary formations of our continent."
But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed, they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the species is probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the vast antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in species and individuals; comparing our Sierra Giant and Sequoia sempervirens of the Coast Range, the only other living species of Sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and described by Heer and Lesquereux, some of which seem to have flourished over vast areas in the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories, during tertiary and cretaceous times, then indeed it becomes plain that our two surviving species, restricted to narrow belts within the limits of California, are mere remnants of the genus, both as to species and individuals, and that they probably are verging to extinction.
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