of Rural Art and Taste. 



319 



Australian Flora. — The Brisba7ie 



Courier publishes the official telegram from 

 Mr. Walter Hill, the government botanist, 

 dated from Cardwell, and received by the 

 Queensland secretary for lands : 



" We have examined the Mulgrave, Russell, 

 Mossman, Daintree and Hull rivers, and have 

 been more or less successful in finding suitable 

 lands for sugar and other tropical and semi- 

 tropical productions. The ascent of the 

 summit of Bellenden Kerr was successfully 

 made by Johnstone, Hill, and eight troopers. 

 At two thousand five hundred feet in height, 

 we observed an undescribed tree with crimson 

 flowers, which excels the Poiniaiia regia, 

 Colvillea racemosa, Lagtrstrosmia regia, and 

 Jacaranda mimosifolia ; at two thousand 

 four hundred feet, a tree-fern which will ex- 

 cel in grandeur all others of the arboreous 

 class ; a palm tree at the same height which 

 will rival any of the British-Indian species in 

 gracefulness. On the banks of the Daintree 

 we saw a palm-cocoa which far exceeds the 

 unique specimens in the garden of the same 

 genera from Brazil, in grandeur and graceful- 

 ness. While cutting a given line on the 

 banks of the river Johnstone, for examining 

 the land, an enormous fig tree stood in the 

 way, far exceeding in stoutness and grandeur 

 the famous giants of California and Victoria. 

 Three feet from the ground it measured one 

 hundred and fifty feet in circumference ; at fifty- 

 five feet where it sent forth giant branches, the 

 stem was nearly eighty feet in circumference." 



Plantains as Food. — Among the starch- 

 producing plants extensively cultivated for 

 food in tropical countries, and which are 

 destined to add immensely to the food-supply 

 of colder climates, are yams, bread-fruit and 

 bananas, including the variety known as 

 plantains. The last family rivals the sago- 

 palm in aflfording the maximum amount of 

 food for the minimum amount of labor. The 

 yield to the acre is in bulk forty-four times 

 thcit of the potato, and the proportion of 



starch is somewhat greater. The fruit is also 

 richer in other elements of nutriment, so that 

 the meal prepared by drying and grinding the 

 plantain core resembles the flour of wheat in 

 food value. It is easily digested, and in 

 British Gruiana is largely employed as food 

 for children and invalids. The cost of pre- 

 paring the food can not be great, and the 

 supply might be unlimited. The proportion 

 of starch is seventeen per cent. ; in bread- 

 fruit it is about the same ; in yams it rises to 

 twenty-five per cent., but is hard to extract, 

 owing to the woody character of the roots. 



Floivers in Mexico. — One thing which 

 strikes one pleasantly in Mexico is the won- 

 derful abundance of flowers. All the year 

 round crowds of Indians sit at the street 

 corners in the early morning, making and 

 selling for a real (sixpence) bouquets, which 

 in London or New York could not be got for 

 a guinea. Roses, verbenas, heliotropes, and 

 carnations grow like weeds ; and besides the 

 made-up bouquets the Indians bring down on 

 their backs from the mountains, loads of the 

 Flor de San Juan (bouvardia), a flower like a 

 white jessamine, and for a quartilla (three 

 half pence) you can buy an armful of it, which 

 will scent a whole house for a week. Our 

 rooms were always fragrant with the bouquets 

 which came in fresh every two or three days, 

 and sometimes round the hanging baskets in 

 the windows a lovely humming-bird would 

 hover, and dip his long bill into the flowers 

 for honey. — The Garden. 



Great Old Oaks. — The Wadsworth oak, 

 at Genesee, N. Y., is said to be five centuries 

 old, and twenty-seven feet in circumference 

 at the base. The massive, slow-growing live 

 oaks at Florida are worthy of notice on ac- 

 count of the enormous length of their branches. 

 Bar tram says : "I have stepped fifty paces in 

 in a straight line from the trunk of one of 

 these trees to the extremity of the limbs." 

 The oaks of Europe are among the grandest 

 of trees. The Cowthorpe tree is seventy- 

 eight feet in circuit at the ground, and is at 

 least 1,800 years old. Another, in Dorset- 

 shire, is of equal age. In Westphalia is a 

 hollow oak -vyhich was a place of refuge in the 



