194 THE PLANT WORLD 



So abundant is it in places that several localities in tlie region are 

 known by the characteristic name " Mesquite Flats." 



The trees sometimes attain a size of nearly a foot in diameter and 

 twenty-five feet in height. They are usually straight and symmetrical 

 with a bushy spreading top but scant foliage. The fact that they make 

 good fence posts and excellent fuel, taken with the other fact that in 

 many places they are the only tree to be found, will shortly result in 

 their practical extermination in the region. Already over a good part 

 of the country nothing but stumps remain. It is not an unusual occur- 

 rence to meet loads of wood and posts coming into the new towns that 

 are springing up all over the country. L^nless the settlers take the 

 matter in hand, it seems but a question of a few months till the mes- 

 quite will be gone from the region. — Charles Newton Gould, University 

 of Oklahoma. 



Dyed Flowers. 



French scientists have recently taken up the artificial coloring of 

 flowers, and a series of lectures has been given at the Sorbonne by a 

 French chemist who has made a specialty of this particular subject. 

 According to this professor, the problem of coloring flowers by artificial 

 means has for several centuries past interested chemists. In 1709 a 

 scientist named Magnal caused a sensation by producing tuberoses of a 

 most exquisite pink, ordinary tuberoses being colored by plunging them 

 into the juice of phylotagne. Some twenty-five years later Comparetti 

 a scholar of Padua, made himself famous and added distinctions to the 

 last days of his town by furnishing for the decoration of churches and 

 cemeteries, wonderful wreaths of black convolvulus. Having made a 

 fortune, he at last agreed to tell his secret, and declared that he had 

 colored the flowers by i)utting their stems in common ink. The scheme 

 didn't work when tried by the townsfolk, so the esteemed Paduan was 

 apparently a liar of parts as well as a maker of the famous Paduan con- 

 volvuli. 



Boissin in 1840 obtained marvelous hyacinths and lilies colored by 

 chemical means, and since then not only chemists but practical florists 

 have made frequent use of dyes in the coloring of flowers. Camellias 

 grown in earth mixed with rosin show fine veins of coral red on their 

 white petals. Earth mixed with iron filings will also color some flow- 

 ers blue, and pansies take on wonderful hues by the dipping of their 

 stems in certain aniline dyes. Some of these unnaturally^ tinted flow- 

 ers are dangerous, and the green carnation was suppressed by the 

 municipal laboratory of Paris, because scientists said that the odor of 

 the flower had poisonous effects. — New York Sun. 



