246 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[August, 



Natural History and Science. 



COMMUNICA TIONS. 



HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE ARBOR- 

 VIT/E. 



[From notes of some verbal remarks made 

 before the Academy of Natural Sciences, of 

 Philadelphia.] 



Mr. Thomas Meehan gave in detail the reasons 

 given by various authors for the name Arbor- 

 vitee in connection with TImja occidentalis—rea- 

 sons un«!atisfactory even to the authors who ad- 

 vanced them. He referred to the statement of 

 Ray, in his Hlstoria Plantarum, that the tree was 

 first introduced from Canada to France and 

 named Arbre de vif, by King Francis the 1st. 

 Francis died in 1547. The seeds from which 

 these plants were raised, could scarcely have 

 been obtained in any other wa}'^ than through 

 Jacques Cartier's expedition, say in 1834, and 

 we may therefore conclude that Thuja Occident- 

 alls, was among the fiist, perhaps the first North 

 American plant to become known in Europe. 

 Parkman, in his Pioneers of France, graphically 

 describes the sufferings of Cartier's band, during 

 the winter of their encampment near the junc- 

 tion of the River Lairet with the St. Charles. 

 Twenty five died of scurvy, and the rest were 

 sick but two. A friendly Indian told him of an 

 evergreen which they called "Annedda," a de- 

 coction of which was sovereign against the 

 disease. In six days the suQ"erers had " drank a 

 tree as large as a French oak," the distemper 

 relaxed its hold, and "health and hope began to 

 revisit the hopeless company" (p. 195). This 

 Annedda seems to have been identified with the 

 white spruce, Abias alba, and is, as I am in- 

 formed by Dr. W. R Gerard, the same as the 

 Mohawk " onnita," and the Onondaga " on 

 netta." According to Rafinesque the spruce 

 beer of the Indians was made of the young tops 

 and young cones of this tree boiled together 

 with maple sugar, and was one of their famous 

 remedies for scurvy. Rafinesque also says that 

 a decoction of the leaves of the arborvitse was 

 an Indian remedy for scurvy and rheumatism ; 

 besides, the leaves, with bear's grease, being 

 used externally. Rafinesque, however, believes 



it was the white spruce which saved the lives of 

 Cartier's band, and if the "Annedda" of the 

 Indiana is really the white spruce, the evidence 

 through the statement made so soon after Car- 

 tier's expedition that the health-giving plant was 

 the "Annedda," is strong. But spruce beer 

 could not have been made in the winter season 

 — the leaves only were used. There is no evi- 

 dence that the white spruce was known in 

 Europe till towards the end of the 18th century. 

 It is but natural that whatever the tree might 

 have been, it was a veritable tree of life— an arbre 

 de vie to Cartier's men. They would certainly 

 make every effort to take with them to their 

 native land so valuable a tree. But we have no 

 reason to believe that they attempted to intro- 

 duce the white spruce. There is, as we have seen, 

 good reason to believe that Cartier took the Thuja 

 occidentalis to Europe, and it is on record that • 

 his royal patron, a few j^ears afterward, distribu- 

 ted the tree as the arborvitse ; and, notwithstand- 

 ing the seemingly positive evidence that the tree 

 was the white spruce, Mr. Meehan thought the 

 Thvja had some ground for disputing the claim. 

 At any rate, whichever may have been the real 

 tree, he could not help suspecting that the name 

 '^arborvitse," had some relation to this touching 

 episode in the history of the Cartier expedition. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



An Enormous Flower. — There are some flow- 

 ers which approach the famous Victoria in size. 

 At Kew they have an Aristolochia, A. Goldeana, 

 a sort of '' Dutchman's Pipe," with a flower 

 which is eighteen inches in diameter. Such a 

 "pipe" as this ought to make very happy the 

 genuine lovers of the weed. 



Color IN THE Dark. — If we take a blue Lilac 

 and grow it in the dark, the flower becomes 

 white, at least this is our belief, though we do 

 not know this from personal experience. We 

 should suppose this would be the case with all 

 flowers, and that if a blue hyacinth were made to 

 flower in the dark it would become white ; but a 

 hyacinth that flowered underground was placed 



