76 
Washington palm {Washingtonia filiferd) from Southern CaHfornia 
is also curious. The specimen includes the top of the tree, which is 
severed from the body, and bears its dried and yellow wide-spread- 
ing leaves. Its pecuHarity is in the ring formations of the trunk, 
which are almost wholly detached from each other, standing one 
within another like a succession of forms of bark. They are easily 
detached from each other. 
The cocoanut-tree from Key West and the finely odorous nut- 
meg-tree from Calitornia are among other specimens of importance. 
The catalpa is represented as a species most remarkable for its du- 
rability. Some of this wood known to have been buried in the earth 
for seventy-five years has been brought out in perfectly sound con- 
dition. Specimens of beautiful woods are seen in the arbutus, sweet 
bay {Persea Carolinensis), Alaska cedar {Chamacyparis Nutkaensis), 
and the beautifully figured maple burl from Missouri. 
With only seven unimportant exceptions, the specific gravity, ash, 
and fuel value of the wood of every indigeneous aborescent species 
of the Uriited States have been scientifically determined. The spe- 
cific gravity was obtained by weighing carefully measured specimens 
100 millimetres long and about 35 millimetres square, previously 
subjected to a temperature of 100'' until their weight became con- 
stant. The ash is given In percentages of dry wood, which were de- 
termined by burning small blocks of the wood in a muffle furnace at 
a low temperature. The relative approximate full value of any wood 
is obtained by deducting its percentage of ash from its specific 
gravity. The correctness of the result thus found is based npon the 
hypothesis, first proposed by Count Rumford, that the value of equal 
weight of all woods for fuel is the same, which is considered to be 
approximately Xxw^ —Scientific American, 
Origin of the CV/r^'/.r.— Recent numbers of Naturen contain m- 
terestmg papers, by Prof. Schubeler, on the original habitat of some 
of the cereals, and the subsequent cultivation in the Scandinavian 
lands and Iceland of barley and rye more especially. It would ap- 
pear that barley was cultivated before other cereals in Scandinavia, 
and that the generic term *' corn " was applied among Northmen to 
this grain only, from the oldest times, and that in the Norwegian 
laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, wherever reference 
was made to '' korriskat"— or standard by which land in the North- 
lands was, and still is, rated in accordance with the corn it is capa- 
ble of yielding— the term was understood to apply to barley. Proot 
of the high latitude to which the cultivation was carried in early 
ages is afforded by the Egil's Saga, where mention is made of a barn 
in Helgeland (65° N. Lat.) used for the storing of corn, and which 
was so large that tables could be spread within it for the entertain- 
ment of 800 guests. In Iceland, barley was cultivated from the time 
of the colonization, in 870, till the middle of the fourteenth century, 
or, according to Jon Storrason, as lately as 1400. 
From that period down to our own times barley has not been 
grown in Iceland, with any systematic attention, the islanders bemo 
dependent on the home country for their supplies of corn. y} ^^ 
last century, however, various attempts were made both by the Ua 
