IN CALIFORNIA 43 



edged leaf the counterpart of a million more that 

 made up the crown of the tree. 



"These things that you take for leaves," he went 

 on, "as you can see, are simply the foot stalks, ex- 

 panded to do a leaf's duty. The true leaf either 

 never develops or if, as may be noticed in saplings, 

 the leaf does set, it soon disappears. These trees 

 with the leaf stalks doing the leaf's work, always 

 remind me of a young widow left penniless with a 

 lot of children, and forced to go into a man's busi- 

 ness to bring up the family." 



Australia again is represented on California 

 streets in the form of the so-called silk oak Grevil- 

 lea robusta beautiful at all seasons because of its 

 richly green fern-like foliage, but presenting its 

 most striking appearance in late spring, when 

 lighted up with its strange rusty-orange trusses of 

 bloom. It is a tree of ancient lineage, belonging to 

 an order the Proteacece which includes the oldest 

 flowering plants on earth, the Adams of the vege- 

 table kingdom. The Grevillea is one of several 

 trees growing in the open on the Pacific Coast, that 

 are prized in colder countries as pot plants for in- 

 door decoration, such as the rubber and the Norfolk 

 Island pine because they are too tender to stand 

 any considerable degree of frost and cannot there 



