yew like tree, and very local, being, so far as known, nearly confined to a few miles along the shores of a single river.  It seems as if it had somehow been crowded down out of the Alleghanies into its present limited southern quarters; for in cultivation it evinces a northern hardiness.  Now, another species of Torreya is a characteristic tree of Japan; and one very like it, if not the same, inhabits the mountains of Northern China—­belongs, therefore, to the Eastern Asiatic temperate region, of which Northern China is a part, and Japan, as we shall see, the portion most interesting to us.  There is only one more species of Torreya, and that is a companion of the redwoods in California.  It is the tree locally known under the name of the California nutmeg.  Here are three or four near brethren, species of the same genus, known nowhere else than in these three habitats.

Moreover, the Torreya of Florida is associated with a yew; and the trees of this grove are the only yew-trees of Eastern North America; for the yew of our Northern woods is a decumbent shrub.  A yew-tree, perhaps the same, is found with Taxodium in the temperate parts of Mexico.  The only other yews in America grow with the redwoods and the other Torreya in California, and extend northward into Oregon.  Yews are also associated with Torreya in Japan; and they extend westward through Mantchooria and the Himalayas to Western Europe, and even to the Azores Islands, where occurs the common yew of the Old World.

So we have three groups of coniferous trees which agree in this peculiar geographical distribution, with, however, a notable extension of range in the case of the yew:  1.  The redwoods, and their relatives, Taxodium and Glyptostrobus, which differ so as to constitute a genus for each of the three regions; 2.  The Torreyas, more nearly akin, merely a different species in each region; 3.  The yews, still more closely related while more widely disseminated, of which it is yet uncertain whether they constitute seven, five, three, or only one species.  Opinions differ, and can hardly be brought to any decisive test.  However it be determined, it may still be said that the extreme differences among the yews do not surpass those of the recognized variations of the European yew, the cultivated races included.

It appears to me that these several instances all raise the very same question, only with different degrees of emphasis, and, if to be explained at all, will have the same kind of explanation.

Continuing the comparison between the three regions with which we are concerned, we note that each has its own species of pines, firs, larches, etc., and of a few deciduous-leaved trees, such as oaks and maples; all of which have no peculiar significance for the present purpose, because they are of genera which are common all round the northern hemisphere.  Leaving these out of view, the noticeable point is that the vegetation of California is most strikingly