November )5, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



473 



Of course, the right of these cattle people to hold their vast 

 estates and to use them in their own way is not questioned. 

 I h'ave frequently shared the hospitality of cattlemen, and 

 know that they are intelligent, large-hearted, honorable men, 

 as are the larger proportion of the cow-boys themselves. But 

 the time will come when the breaking up of these vast estates 

 will be for the best interests of all concerned. This means 

 improved agriculture where it is practicable, and civilization 

 witli all the happy incidents which attend it. It means more 

 homes, more gardens and orchards, and more fields of cotton 

 and grain. It does not mean less, but more and better stock, 

 for any long-continued successful system of agriculture im- 

 plies abundance of good stock, well cared-for and fattened at 

 home. This region had much better remain as it is than 

 to be settled hastily by people who are ignorant of the 

 country and who have barely sufficient means to bring them 

 here. 



I have seen this section at its worst, for which I am not sorry. 

 Gradually, but rapidly enough for the best interests of the 

 country, as means of irrigation are provided from the rivers, 

 from artesian wells and from the surplus water of rainy sea- 

 sons held in reservoirs and by dams, this portion of Texas will 

 become comparatively populous. Here in Duval County sev- 

 eral thousand bales of cotton are annually raised without irri- 

 gation. I have seen good fields of that wonderful dry-counlry 

 plant growing still farther westward. Corn and sorghum are 

 also raised in this county, and winter gardens are successful. 



San Diego is a pleasant and enterprising little village, about 

 fifty miles west of Corpus Christi. It lies a little south of the 

 twentieth parallel, and is near the ninety-ninth meridian. A 

 creek-bed extends through the western part of the village, and 

 when heavy rains occur it becomes nearly a river. Duval 

 County is about the eastern limit of our distinctively south- 

 western Cocculus diversifolius. The specific name of this 

 species is significant of the careless way the plant has fallen 

 into of forming its leaves without much regularity as to their 

 size and form. They are commonly slightly heart-shaped, 

 obtuse at the summit and abruptly mucronate. Yet, some- 

 times on the same branch they are oblong or even linear. 

 The species is a less rampant grower than C. Carolinus, though 

 it sometimes climbs ten to fifteen feet high. Its small flowers 

 are yellowish. They are succeeded by small drupes, which 

 are black, with a bloom when ripe. 



South-western Passiflora fci'tida grows about San Diego. I 

 have collected it as far eastward as Rockport, climbing over 

 bushes close to the waters of Aransas Bay. It sometimes 

 trails. It grows also in Bee County, near Beeville, and along 

 the Rio Grande as far north as Eagle Pass, and southward to 

 the equator. It furnishes its flowers and fruit with a three- 

 parted netted involucre, like our P. incarnata and the newly 

 discovered P. Palmeri, whose leaves those of our species 

 closely resemble in form. The whole plant, green fruit and 

 all, is offensively foetid. 



On the right bank of the arroyo, about a mile below the town, 

 Coursetia axillaris grows. Here it is a low shrub, three to 

 five feet tall. It is said to rise at times into a tree. This inter- 

 esting, but little-known, member of the Pea family may readily 

 be recognized by having the leaflets of the lowest pair rounded 

 in form, while the leaflets of the other pairs are obovate ; by 

 its solitary yellow flowers and its deeply lobed tlattish pods. 



Kansas City, Kan. E- ^^- Plank. 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — XXIV. 



CEPHALOTAXUS DRUPACEA is the only Japanese 

 member and the type of a genus of half a dozen species 

 distributed from Japan, through China to northern India. 

 It is widely and quite generally scattered through the 

 mountain-regions of the empire, extending north to central 

 Yezo, where it appears on the low hills as an undershrub, 

 only two or three feet high, while on the Hakone Moun- 

 tains, in Hondo, it occasionally grows into a bushy tree 

 twenty or twenty-five feet in height Cephalotaxus drupa- 

 cea is now a familiar object in our gardens, although it is 

 not very hardy or satisfactory herein New England, where 

 it often suffers in winter, missing, no doubt, the thick and 

 continuous covering of snow which protects it in Yezo. 

 Like its relative, the Gingko, the same individual does not 

 produce male and female flowers, and the fruit, like that of 

 the Gingko, is an almond-like nut enclosed in a fleshy cov- 

 ering. A resinous oil, used in lamps, is pressed from the 

 seeds, and the wood is occasionally employed in cabinet- 

 making. 



The (xingko, although we are always in the habit of as- 

 sociating it with Japan, is in reality not a native of that 

 country, into which it was brought with their religion by the 

 Buddhist priests. It is stiJl unknown in a wild state, and 

 it is possible that this genus, which was widely distributed 

 with many species, through the temperate and colder parts 

 of the northern hemisphere in tertiary times, has become 

 exterminated from its native forests, and has onlj- been pre- 

 served through the agency of the priests of Buddah, who 

 seem to hold it in particular respect The hardiness of this 

 beautiful tree, which thrives under the most trying condi- 

 tions and in the severest climates, indicates that it orig- 

 inated in some northern interior region ; and if it is ever 

 seen growing without cultivation it will be found probably 

 in some remote district of Mongolia. There are noble, 

 great, broad-branched specimens in the neighborhood of 

 the temples in Tokyo fully a hundred feet high, with tall 

 massive trunks six or seven feet in diameter. The Gingko 

 is, perhaps, the most beautiful, as it is certainly the most 

 interesting tree which is to be seen in Japan ; and in the 

 autumn, especially when the sunlight flutters through the 

 bright yellow leaves, these great trees, with their broad 

 heads of graceful semi-pendulous branches, are magnificent 

 objects. The fleshy covering of the fruit has a rancid and 

 most disagreeable flavor, but the kernel of the almond-like 

 stone is delicate and is esteeined a luxury in botli China 

 and Japan, where it is found in the markets in considera- 

 ble quantities. The wood, which is light yellow in color, 

 is soft and brittle, and as the trees grow to a very great age 

 and are only planted for ornament in Japan and rarely cut 

 down, it has no economic importance there. 



Torreya, or, if the custom which now prevails among 

 American botanists is followed, Tumion, Rafinesque's 

 name, which also appears in eastern and western America 

 and in China, occurs in Japan in its largest and most beau- 

 tiful representative, Tumion nuciferum, one of the hand- 

 somest of all coniferous trees. Although nowhere very 

 common, the Kaya, as this tree is called in Japan, was 

 seen in all the mountainous regions of central Hondo 

 which we visited. It often grows as an undershrub in the 

 forest, or as a small tree twenty or thirty feet tall, but occa- 

 sionally rises to the dignity of a tree of the first class, as on 

 the banks of the Kiso-gawa, near Agematsu, we saw speci- 

 mens fully eighty feet high, with great trunks four or five 

 feet in diameter. Such trees, with their bright red bark 

 and compact heads of dark green, almost black lustrous 

 foliage, possess extraordinary beauty. No other Yew-like 

 tree which I have seen equals it in massiveness and depth 

 of color, and the Kaya should be cultivated wherever the 

 climate permits it to display its beauty. The elevation 

 above the sea at which it flourishes in Japan indicates that 

 it will be hardy in the middle states, although we cannot 

 expect to see it grow to any size in New England. An oil 

 used in cooking, Kaya-no-abura, is an article of considera- 

 ble commerce in Japan, and the kernels of the nuts, which 

 possess an agreeable, slightly resinous flavor, are sold in 

 great quantities in the markets in the autumn, and are a 

 favorite article of food. The wood is strong, straight- 

 grained, light yellow, and valued in building and cabinet- 

 making. 



Taxus, which has two species in eastern America, one 

 in the north and another, almost the rarest of American 

 trees, in the south, which is represented in western North 

 America, and is widely distributed through Europe and 

 continental Asia, appears in Japan with a noble tree, Taxus 

 cuspidata, which, to judge by our observations, is confined 

 to the island of Yezo, where it is not uncommon on the low 

 hills of the interior. Here it often attains the height of 

 forty or fifty feet, and forms a trunk two feet in diameter, 

 covered with bright red bark. The Yew is often employed 

 by the Japanese to ornament their gardens, and the wood, 

 which is exceedingly hard, tough and of a bright red color, 

 is used by the Ainos for their bows, and is valued in cabi- 

 net-making and for the interior decorations of expensive 

 houses. This beautiful tree, as is now well known, flour- 



