252 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 435. 



societies all over the country the time will come when any 

 one who willfully defaces a public building or litters up a 

 public place will be looked upon as a criminal. Most 

 surely, any one who does not respect the rights of society 

 stands in the attitude of a public enemy. Society certainly 

 has the right to demand that its highways and public 

 grounds shall be kept clean and wholesome. One who is 

 willfully guilty of the unspeakable nuisance which may fill 

 the air with microbes of consumption and other diseases 

 as surely deserves punishment as one who willfully pollutes 

 the city water-supply. 



Forms of Some European Conifers. — I. 



THE Spruce, Picea excelsa, appears on the Swiss Alps 

 in several remarkable forms which are not, strictly 

 speaking, varieties, but peculiarities of development of the 

 trunk or of the branches. I do not know if American den- 

 drologists have observed analogous modifications in the 

 Spruces which inhabit North America, but this subject 

 would certainly be worth investigating. 



As is well known, the normal form of the European 

 Spruce has branches obliquely ascending or horizontal, 

 with spreading branchlets. Among the trees of this' type 

 may be found, especially on steep declivities, a pendulous 

 form with pendent branches and long, slightly branched, 

 very slender branchlets descending vertically and giving 

 to the tree the aspect of a Weeping Willow. 



In another form, the pyramidal, the branches ascend at 

 narrow angles, giving to the tree the habit of the fastigiate 

 Cypress or of the Lombardy Poplar. Another special form 

 is the strigosa, with very numerous slender horizontal 

 branches furnished with numerous branchlets spreading 

 from all sides of the branch. This form resembles the 

 Larch in habit, often in a most remarkable manner. 



A form which is rare in the Alps, but common in the 

 north of Norway and Finland, near the northern limits of 

 the range of the species, is columnaris. In this form the tree 

 is small and feeble, with short tufted branches which form 

 a narrow column. The Swedish botanists consider that this 

 diminutive form is due to the effects of the early and severe 

 cold of the winter which checks the growth of the branches. 

 I only know this form in our Alps by a note and figure in 

 the Journal Suisse aVEconomie Foresiiire (1896, Number 4), 

 but in this instance it is only the upper part of the tree 

 which assumes the columnar form, while the lower part 

 presents the ordinary aspect. Individual Spruce and Fir 

 trees (Abies pectinata) often occur on the Alps of columnar 

 habit, but these are usually large trees whose branches have 

 been shortened by the attacks of insects. 



Another form of the Spruce produced by exterior influ- 

 ence is the Nana, which is always striking from its regular 

 pyramidal habit with short, slender, tufted branches, which 

 have the appearance of having been trimmed by one of 

 Louis the XIV.'s gardeners. Such trees are rarely more than 

 six feet high, and their dwarf habit is due simply to the 

 browsing of goats or of chamois, which in winter are fre- 

 quently driven to food of this sort. 



The inhabitants of the Alps distinguish by special names 

 (Geants, Epiceas Protecteurs, Epiceas de Tempete, etc.) 

 the individual trees which, near the upper limit of the 

 forest, often stand alone in open pastures, where they 

 frequently grow to an enormous size and from time imme- 

 morial have sheltered cattle and their guards from tem- 

 pests. 



The form furcata, with a trunk divided usually five or six 

 feet above the surface of the ground into two or three stems, 

 is not rare ; but the most curious form is that which I shall 

 call stolonifera. I have seen it only once in a park near 

 Geneva, where there is a group of large trees growing on 

 a gentle slope, with their long lower branches on the 

 ground. At a considerable distance from the trunk these 

 branches have rooted and produced saplings which have 

 already grown to considerable size, one branch even 

 repeating this phenomenon a second time at a considera- 



ble distance from the first point of rooting. This remark- 

 able development, which resembles the growth of a Straw- 

 berry-plant from a stolon, has not been produced artificially, 

 but is entirely natural, and the trees which are already old 

 afford one of the most curious spectacles imaginable. 



Bale, Switzerland. H. CJlriSl. 



Plant Names of Indian Origin. — I. 



IN a manuscript dictionary of North American plant 

 names, of which I began the compilation many years 

 ago at the suggestion of Dr. Gray, and which has reached 

 voluminous proportions, there are many strange words, 

 some of foreign and others of American origin, the mean- 

 ing of which is not generally known. Many of these words 

 have found their way into recent dictionaries, some unac- 

 companied with any explanation, while the etymology 

 assigned to others is entirely erroneous. Among the unex- 

 plained native plant names there figure in considerable 

 number words of aboriginal origin, which are invariably 

 marked in dictionaries as " North American Indian," a very 

 vague statement in view of the fact that within the limits of 

 the United States alone there are represented fifty-eight dis- 

 tinct stocks or families of Indian languages that differ as 

 radically from each other as they do from the Aryan or 

 Semitic families. Of these linguistic stocks, the Algonkin, 

 which occupied a much more extensive area than any 

 other, has given us the majority of the plant names that are 

 really of aboriginal origin (for all that are thus specified in 

 dictionaries are not Indian). Next in point of numbers 

 come names derived from the Aztec through Spanish; then 

 those borrowed from the Carib dialects of the Greater and 

 Lesser Antilles ; then a few from South American Indian 

 languages ; and, finally, one or two each from the Timu- 

 cuan, Muskhogean,Siouan,Salishan,Chinookan, Shahaptian, 

 Shoshonean and Wakashan families of the southern and 

 western stales. 



To Tlie Sun (New York) of June 30th, 1895, I contributed 

 an article on the words that have been introduced into 

 English from the Indian languages of North America. 

 These words were divided into three categories : (1) Ani- 

 mal Names, (2) Plant Names, and (3) Miscellaneous Words. 

 Of most of the words of the first and third classes I gave 

 translations, but of the plant names I offered merely a bare 

 list, with the intention of elaborating this part of the sub- 

 ject at some time in the future and in some journal where 

 the matter would meet the eye of those who are familiar 

 with plants and their popular names, and to whom the 

 subject is of more interest than it is to the general public. 



I present the list, thus amplified, herewith, premising 

 that a study of this kind is attended with considerable diffi- 

 culty. Were there but a single family of Indian languages, 

 the interpretation of any given word, 'unless it were a de- 

 rivative from an archaic root of lost or uncertain meaning, 

 would, after a study of the different dialects, be compara- 

 tively easy. But such being far from the case, and our 

 Indian-English plant names having been borrowed from 

 different linguistic sources, it becomes necessary in the 

 first place to find out as nearly as possible where they 

 originated (not always an easy matter), and then to ascer- 

 tain the language now or formerly spoken in the locality ; 

 otherwise one might be led into gross error, for there are, 

 perhaps, few Indian linguistic families that do not contain 

 in their vocabulary words similar in sound (and in form 

 when written) to words in another and entirely distinct 

 language. Thus, to give but a single example, Wahoo is a 

 Dakota (Siouan) name for a certain tree, another Wahoo is 

 a Muscogee (Muskohegean) name for a tree also, while 

 still another word, Wahoo, is the Micmac (Algonkin) name 

 for an egg. 



Having traced the word to the place of its origin and to 

 the language to which it belongs, we may find, as in fact 

 we sometimes do, that the language is extinct and has left 

 behind it but meagre traces of its vocabulary, or that it has 

 not as yet been sufficiently studied, radically and gram- 

 matically, to permit of an analysis of its words. Numerous 



