If the Redwood be considered Grecian in its glory, the Giant Sequoia is Roman in its grandeur. Both produce forests of giants. In one beauty and grace held splendid court; in the other greatness and magnificence. The one is Grecian in its idealism, so divine in its loftiness as to exert an elevating and ennobling influence, and so fine in its perfection of form as to epitomize this immortal quality of Athenian genius; the other is Roman in its invincible strength, so imposing in its stolidity and massiveness as to embarrass its beholders, and so baffling in its superiority as to thrill them with awe and fill them with wonder. One is an emblem of eternal youth, ever sprouting Phoenix-like from its ruins and pressing with youthful vigor upon the faltering footsteps of its mouldering sires, exempt, like the immortal influence of Greece, from mutability and decay; the other is an emblem of permanence, a form of endurance standing among the temporary shapes of time, a structure not unlike a Roman pile, built to withstand the onslaught of the ages. Today both species of Sequoia are confined to the mountains of California. They inhabit the western slopes of its two systems of mountains, the Coast Range on the West and the Sierra Nevada on the East. The former parallels the ocean; the latter forms the backbone of the State. Enclosed between these mountain chains lies the great valley of California—a vast, oval plain, scarred all over with grain fields and orchards, and mottled with shadows from the drifting sky squadrons—with its two central rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, meeting in its center and flowing with tranquil deliberation through a series of bays, on through the Golden Gate to the Pacific. In comparison with the vast distribution of the genus during Miocene times these two surviving species now occupy a mere fragment of territory. The Redwood is restricted solely to the coastal mountains; the Big Tree obtains only in the Sierras. Together, by reason of the lofty height of the coast species and the gigantic girth of the Sierra species, they comprise a group of conifers unrivaled the world over. Since they are found nowhere else, California rightfully merits John Muir’s claim of being the “Paradise of Conifers.”