8 THE PLANT WORLD 



National Parks, which are supposed to embrace- and give security to a 

 large part of the remaining Big Trees, are eaten into by a sawmill each, 

 and by private lumber claims amounting to 1,172 acres. The rest of 

 the scanty patches of Big Trees are in a fair way to disappear — in Cal- 

 averas, Tuloumne, Fresno and Tulare counties they are now disappear- 

 ing — by the ax. In brief, the majority of the Big Trees of California, 

 certainly the best of them, are owned by people who have every right, 

 and in many cases every intention, to cut them into lumber. 



The lumbering of the Big Tree is destructive to a most unusual 

 degree. In the first place, the enormous size and weight of the trees 

 necessarily entails very considerable breakage when one of them falls. 

 Such a tree strikes the ground with a force of many hundreds or even 

 thousands of tons, so that even slight inequalities are sufficient to 

 smash the brittle trunk at its upper extremity into almost useless frag- 

 ments. The loss from this cause is very great, but it is only one of the 

 sources of waste. The great diameter of the logs, and, in spite of the 

 lightness of the wood, their enormous weight, makes it impossible to 

 handle many of them without breaking them up. For this purpose 

 gunpowder is the most available means. The fragments of logs blown 

 apart in this wa,y are not only often of wasteful shapes, but unless very 

 nice judgment is exercised in preparing the blast, a great deal of the 

 wood itseK is scattered in useless splinters. This waste, added as it is 

 to the other sources of loss already mentioned, makes a total probably 

 often considerably in excess of half the total volume of the standing 

 tree ; and this is only one side of the matter. 



From Bulletin 28, of the Division of Forestry, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



It is a well known fact that there is often 

 great variation in the leaves that may be se- 

 lected from the same tree, or even from the 

 same branch, but we do not recall having seen 

 quite so striking differences as are exhibited in 

 the specimen here figured. This specimen is a 

 twig from the common Japanese honeysuckle 

 {Lonicera Japonica) and was sent in by Dr. 

 Charles A White, of Washington, D. C. He 

 also sent a number of separate leaves, all taken from the same plant, 

 showing a range from perfectly circular to ovate and narrowly linear, 

 and from entire to deeply lobed. Three distinct types are shown in 

 the little branch figured. — F. H. K. 



