The National and Congressional movement for the preservation of the Sequoia in California represents a growth of intelligent sentiment.  It is the same kind of sentiment which must he aroused, and aroused in time, to bring about Government legislation if we are to preserve our native animals.  That which principally appeals to us in the Sequoia is its antiquity as a race, and the fact that California is its last refuge.

As a special and perhaps somewhat novel argument for preservation, I wish to remind you of the great antiquity of our game animals, and the enormous period of time which it has taken nature to produce them.  We must have legislation, and we must have it in time.  I recall the story of the judge and jury who arrived in town and inquired about the security of the prisoner, who was known to be a desperate character; they were assured by the crowd that the prisoner was perfectly secure because he was safely hanging to a neighboring tree.  If our preservative measures are not prompt, there will be no animals to legislate for.

SENTIMENT AND SCIENCE.

The sentiment which promises to save the Sequoia is due to the spread of knowledge regarding this wonderful tree, largely through the efforts of the Division of Forestry.  In the official chronology of the United States Geological Survey—­which is no more nor less reliable than that of other geological surveys, because all are alike mere approximations to the truth—­the Sequoia was a well developed race 10,000,000 of years ago.  It became one of a large family, including fourteen genera.  The master genus—­the Sequoia—­alone includes thirty extinct species.  It was distributed in past times through Canada, Alaska, Greenland, British Columbia, across Siberia, and down into southern Europe.  The Ice Age, and perhaps competition with other trees more successful in seeding down, are responsible for the fact that there are now only two living species—­the “red wood,” or Sequoia sempervirens, and the giant, or Sequoia gigantea.  The last refuge of the gigantea is in ten isolated groves, in some of which the tree is reproducing itself, while in others it has ceased to reproduce.

In the year 1900 forty mills and logging companies were engaged in destroying these trees.

All of us regard the destruction of the Parthenon by the Turks as a great calamity; yet it would be possible, thanks to the laborious studies which have chiefly emanated from Germany, for modern architects to completely restore the Parthenon in its former grandeur; but it is far beyond the power of all the naturalists of the world to restore one of these Sequoias, which were large trees, over 100 feet in height, spreading their leaves to the sun, before the Parthenon was even conceived by the architects and sculptors of Greece.

LIFE OF THE SEQUOIA AND HISTORY OF THOUGHT.