IN CALIFORNIA 37 



trees is enmity to malaria. The disposition of sci- 

 ence, however, as so often happens in matters that 

 are of popular acceptance, is to throw cold water 

 on this cheerful view; yet the fact remains, that 

 many localities previously malarial both in the New 

 World and the Old, are no longer so since eucalypts 

 have been planted and have sucked up the spots of 

 moist stagnation. 



The first importation of eucalyptus seeds into 

 California was of too little moment at the time to 

 be thought worthy of record, but Mr. A. J. Mc- 

 Clatchie, the author of an exhaustive monograph on 

 the eucalypts in America, published a few years ago 

 by the United States Department of Agriculture, is 

 disposed to credit a Mr. Walker of San Francisco 

 with that unwitting act of philanthropy in 1856, 

 shortly after their importation into Europe and 

 Africa. It is not likely, therefore, that there is a 

 single eucalyptus in California over fifty years old. 

 Planted here at first more as a curiosity than any- 

 thing else for their magical rapidity of growth 

 made them seem a sort of arboreal Jack's bean- 

 stalk the trees attracted comparatively little no- 

 tice until about 1875. Then Ellwood Cooper of 

 Santa Barbara, who had in the meantime wintered 

 and summered a number of different species for 

 several years, and had some fifty thousand speci- 



