5 02 



Garden and Forest. 



Number 460. 



being already provided with three large and excellent 

 playgrounds adjacent to some of the principal school- 

 houses in the town. 



Other cities and towns may well follow this example and 

 secure now, while land is comparatively cheap, an adequate 

 provision of open spaces for the future. All our cities, 

 large and small, will increase rapidly in population, and 

 land within their borders, or in their immediate neighbor- 

 hood, adapted to the purposes of parks and playgrounds 

 will never be cheaper than it is now. A wise policy will 

 make such provision in advance of the actual necessities of 

 the community, and in laying out the new districts of all 

 cities land should be liberally secured for these purposes. 



The growth of cities at the expense of the rural popula- 

 tion will make the supply of country-bred men and women, 

 who in the past have been the mainstay of the nation, 

 smaller and more difficult to obtain ; and the men and, 

 what is even more important, the mothers of the men who 

 are going to carry on the American experiment of self- 

 government will be city boys and girls. Too much, 

 therefore, cannot be done to make them healthy, clean and 

 well instructed, and unless they are supplied with fresh air 

 and with opportunities to play in freedom the games which 

 belong to their age their chances of becoming useful citi- 

 zens are not promising. 



Dr. Augustine Henry, writing from Mengtse, Yu-nan, 

 contributes an interesting and important paper to the 

 America?i Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record on Chinese 

 Soap-trees. From very early times the fruits of these trees 

 have been used by the Chinese for washing purposes, and. 

 in spite of the introduction of alkaline soaps from England 

 and Germany, they are still esteemed for washing the hair 

 and cleaning delicate fabrics like silk. Little is known of 

 the chemistry of these fruits, although it may be assumed 

 that their peculiar properties are due to the presence of 

 saponin. Chinese Soap-trees belong to two natural fami- 

 lies, the Sapindacea? and the Leguminosse. The best 

 known, perhaps, of these plants is Sapindus Mukorossi, a 

 Chinese and Formosa tree cultivated in Japanese gardens 

 and in those of north-west India and Bengal. Dr. Henry 

 tells us that this tree is common in the southern provinces 

 of China and in the islands of Hainan and Formosa. Fur- 

 ther north it occurs in Chekiang and Hupeh, although it is 

 rare in these provinces. The fruits of all the trees of this 

 genus have the same properties, two of them growing 

 spontaneously in the United States, one on the keys of 

 southern Florida, while the other is widely distributed 

 along the southern boundary of the United States from 

 south-western Missouri southward. The fruit of Pancovia 

 Delavayi resembles that of Sapindus, and is also used as 

 soap, according to the French missionary Delavay, by 

 whom it was found in Yu-nan a few years ago. The most 

 esteemed of the Chinese fruit-trees, however, is Gymno- 

 cladus Chinensis, a near relative of our own Kentucky 

 Coffee-tree. This tree grows in central China in the prov- 

 inces of Hupeh, Szechwan and Anhui, Chekiang and 

 Kiangsi. The Chinese name, Fei tsao, meaning fat 

 Gleditschia, refers to the fact that the pods of this tree are 

 much thicker than those of the true Gleditschias. 



Eastern Asia must be considered the home of this last 

 genus, eleven species or forms being known in the forests 

 of that region, while in North America there are only two. 

 The pods are employed in Asia for washing, and those of 

 Gleditschia officinalis are used as a drug by the Chinese. 

 As Dr. Henry points out, there is at present considerable 

 confusion regarding the different species of Asiatic Gledit- 

 schias, and a monograph of the whole genus is very much 

 to be desired. 



The Lungngan-tree (Nephelium Longana) occurs wild 

 in Formosa and is cultivated in that island and in 

 southern China for its edible fruit. The seeds are ground 

 into powder and are said to be used for washing the hair. 

 Saponin also occurs in the Chinese Tea-oil tree, Camellia 



Sasanqua. This plant is cultivated in China for its seeds, 

 which yield the so-called tea-oil. The seeds contain about 

 ten per cent, of saponin, and the refuse after the oil is 

 extracted is known as tea-seed cake, and this refuse is 

 used by the Chinese for washing, and to poison fish. The 

 saponin stupefies fish, which rise to the surface and are 

 then easily captured. It is interesting to note that "a 

 decoction of the refuse poured on a grass lawn causes the 

 earthworms to come to the surface, and it is used conse- 

 quently to eradicate earthworms from soil in which plants 

 in pots are grown or to obtain speedily bait for angling.'' 



Forest Conditions in the Southern Sierras. 



NO more magnificent forests are to be found in the 

 Sierra Nevada mountains than in the district lying 

 to the west and south-west of Mount Whitney, and includ- 

 ing the headwaters of the Kern, Tule and Kaweah rivers ; 

 yet, although it is a region of beautiful and varied scenery, 

 easily reached and adjoining the highest peaks of the range, 

 it is one but little known and seldom visited except by the 

 people of the immediate vicinity in the valley below and 

 some adventurous climbers of Mount Whitney. In fact, 

 many intelligent Californians are still unaware even of the 

 existence of the Sequoia National Park which is under 

 military protection, and know nothing of the Sierra 

 Forest Reserve, which extends from the Yosemite National 

 Park southward over two hundred miles, with an average 

 breadth of, perhaps, fifty miles to Mount Breckenridge, in 

 Kern County, and which is not under protection of any 

 kind at present, the lands within it still belonging to the 

 Government, having merely been withdrawn from sale or 

 entry. Only two wagon-roads penetrate this country, and 

 these only for a short distance — one from Porterville up the 

 Middle Fork of the Tule to some sawmills and the " summer 

 shanty town " of Mountain Home, at an elevation of about 

 6,000 feet ; the other from Visalia up the East Fork of the 

 Kaweah through the Sequoia Park to Mineral King, a deserted 

 mining camp, at an altitude of 7,700 feet, the usual head- 

 quarters of the company of United States cavalry which 

 patrols the park during the summer. 



On entering this region from the plains of the great valley 

 a distance of about twenty-five miles is usually traversed 

 through foothills and lower mountains before reaching the 

 coniferous forests. The change in vegetation is apt to be 

 abrupt from the White Oaks and Scrub Oak, the Manzanita 

 and Ceanothus, to the immense shafts of the Yellow and 

 Sugar Pines, the Incense Cedars, and a little farther on the 

 red boles of the Sequoias. Here the undergrowth is now 

 almost wanting, consisting, for the most part, of scattering 

 clusters of young conifers, with the intervening spaces 

 usually quite bare, except where in more protected or less 

 shaded stretches the lowly, odorous Squaw-mat, Chamee- 

 batia foliolosa, covers the pine-needles with its lawn-like 

 green. Higher up the forest becomes denser, the White, 

 and afterward the Red Firs, as Abies concolor and A. 

 magnifica are locally termed, begin to predominate, and 

 the wet meadows on the higher altitudes are often held in 

 exclusive possession by the white stems of the Tamaracks 

 (Pinus Murrayana). 



Aside from the so-called Giant Forest in the park, near 

 the Marble Fork of the Kaweah,there are scattered throughout 

 this district many fine groves of Sequoia Wellingtonia upon 

 the upper waters of the Tule and Kaweah, each extending 

 over several hundred acres, and often for two or three 

 miles, mingled with other trees, and each containing many 

 hundreds of Redwoods, as the Sequoias are here called. 

 Professor Dudley speaks of this region as "the real home 

 of the species." In spots sheltered from fire and grazing, 

 young trees are found in considerable numbers of a size 

 from two to ten feet high, while trees of a size intermediate 

 between these and the smaller giants, six or eight feet in 

 diameter, are very rare. 



Scattered throughout the district at altitudes between 

 5,000 and 8,000 feet is the Sugar Pine, first among its 



