182 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[June, 



looking, better dressed, more intelligent and 

 self-respecting in appearance. I am told that 

 many of them have comfortable dwellings, some 

 stock, and raise fruit and vegetables; but none, 

 so far as I have heard, do much farming. The 

 abundance of fish and game is a resource which 

 some of them find quite profitable. 



Meeting some of them at the village store, I 

 examined their curious baskets with much inter- 

 est, and " Indian Lewis " gave me these particu- 

 lars : The)^ are made of the inner fibres of cer- 

 tain roots, fine and tough as threads, woven so 

 closely that they will contain water, and the 

 outside is covered with rushes of different colors, 

 interwoven as the basket is made. The work 

 is extremely tedious, but the baskets will last a 

 life-time. Lewis said that " before the white 

 men came" these were used for cooking. They 

 were made of large size, and water, meat and 

 vegetables being placed in them, red-hot stones 

 were added, and continually changed till the 

 cooking was finished. 



These Indians have long been at peace with 

 the whites, and say that if any of the hostile 

 tribes from the east should ever invade this 

 region, they would be the first victims. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



The Bartra5[ Oak. — Mr. Isaac C. Martin- 

 dale, Camden, K. J., has prepared and published, 

 in pamphlet form,acompletehistory of this tree, 

 of which there are now quite a number known, 

 and shows that it must take rank as a good 

 species. When Michaux' Sylva was published, 

 and the kind named Quercus heterophylla, he 

 thought the one tree on the Bartram estate the 

 only one existing. 



The Filekee of California. — This is the 

 modern Californian for the older Mexican Alfil- 

 erilla — the common name of the Erodium ci- 

 cutarium, an European, or at least, doubtfully 

 native plant, which has found itself in remark- 

 ably comfortable circumstances in the climate 

 and soil of California, and has spread like wild- 

 fire through the State. And then, it is so wel- 

 come to the Californians ! A correspondent of 

 the San Francisco Chronicle calls it the prince 

 of pasture plants. 



The Tallow Tree. — An Australian paper 

 says: "The Chinese Tallow tree, Stillingia 

 (Exeacaria) sebifera, and several other plants of 



Southern Europe and the Levant, are succeed- 

 ing well and require very little attention. The 

 Chinese Tallow tree belongs to the order Eu- 

 phorbiacese or Spurgewort family. Like the 

 ordinary Euphorbias, its fruit contains three 

 seeds, but they are embedded in a fatty sub- 

 stance, which is literally vegetable tallow. Mr. 

 Robert Fortune, in his interesting work, Tea 

 Countries of China, gives an exhaustive account 

 of the Chinese method of extracting the tallow 

 from this tree. It appears that they separate it 

 from the seeds by bruising and steaming the 

 fruit, and use it for making candles. The seeds, 

 too, when separated from the tallow, yield a 

 valuable oil by expression. The wood of the 

 tree is employed in the manufacture of printing 

 blocks, whilst from the leaves is extracted a 

 valuable dye." This tree has long been under 

 culture in the Southern United States, and is one 

 of the leading shade-trees on the streets of New 

 Orleans-. "We get tallow too easily to make it 

 profitable to look to this tree for a supply, but 

 it is well to know what other nations are doing. 



Pice A Pungens. — Professor Sargent writes 

 that " the following extract from a letter from 

 Mr. .John F. Baldwin, of Otley, Iowa, is inter- 

 esting as showing that Picea pungens (Abies 

 Menziesii of the Colorado botanists) was really 

 introduced into cultivation as early as 1860, or 

 two years earlier than the first seed of this 

 species were sent home by Dr. Parry. A speci- 

 men from one of Mr. Baldwin's trees, now be- 

 fore me, confirms his determination of the 

 species. Mr. Baldwin writes: 'I would say, 

 in regard to my plants of Picea pungens, that I 

 dug them up in the Rocky Mountains of Colo- 

 rado, in April, 1860, and brought them to Iowa 

 with several other kinds of trees, by wagon, be- 

 ing over a month on the way. The trees were 

 packed in hay, as I could get nothing better to 

 pack them in at the time. The trees were less 

 than two feet in height, and at the time I began 

 to dig them it commenced snowing. During the 

 two hours we were engaged in digging the plants, 

 snow to the depth of two feet must have fallen, 

 so that before the trees were all taken up we 

 had to dig down into the snow to find where 

 they were. These trees ai-e now 25 feet high, 

 and are very hardy, having withstood our most 

 severe winters. They have never been in the 

 least killed back, and I consider them as hardy 

 and beautiful as any tree which can be found in 

 this countrv.' " 



