52 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



water and the backs of animals ; and in these latter 

 days many are transplanted in railroad cars, on 

 which they travel, tramp-like, without the formality 

 of paying passage money. The Forty-niners' bean 

 importations brought into Central California many 

 a seed that had never been there before. 



To the plant lover these introduced plants are in 

 a class to themselves, and the practised eye picks 

 them out from the native flora of the country, as 

 one notes an Italian face or a German figure in the 

 crowds of Broadway. Often they stimulate the 

 fancy by their historical or literary associations. 

 In the case of a large proportion of our native 

 American plants, when we have labeled them with 

 a couple of Latin names searched out in a botanical 

 manual, their story is told ; our country is too young 

 for them to have become known to the people and 

 to have been accepted as partners in the national 

 life. These floral foreigners, however, that have 

 taken out their naturalization papers, and are 

 sturdily competing with the natives for a share in 

 Columbia's sunshine and soil, are quite frequently 

 plants with a known history and so are possessed 

 of a human interest that lends an especial fascina- 

 tion to their study. In California such plants are 

 of comparatively recent introduction ; the great ma- 

 jority of them were unknown here half a century 



