1 66 



Garden and Forest. 



[April 3, 1889. 



ductive interests of the state. No doubt a cause of action 

 would lay against any one who by such use of his own forest 

 property did damage to his neigiibors, either by diminishing 

 their water-supply or by so suddenly augmenting it in the 

 form of torrents ris to destroy their property. Such remedy 

 will be the state's last resort, and can only be relied on after 

 great damage has been done. Wise measures should prevent 

 such serious injuries to the people. The active attention of 

 the Boartl has been given not only to the preservation of our 

 forests, but also to the planting of trees for economic and or- 

 namental pin-poses. Our native trees have been too much 

 neglected, but with the exception of the Monterey Pine they 

 are generally of slow growth, especially in dry situations. The 

 foreign trees introduced have disadvantages in most cases, 

 and that extraordinary grower, the Blue Gum, of Tasmania, is 

 not capable of supporting the frosts of many of our interior 

 points, nor the excessive drought of others. It happens that 

 the very places where trees would be of the greatest advan- 

 age are those where the trees usually relied on for planting 

 will not succeed or do but poorly. The Board has endeavored 

 to remedy this condition by the introduction of other trees 

 suited to the more difficult climates of the state. After exten- 

 sive correspondence, the Board felt justified in recommending 

 several trees as being better able to resist excessive drought 

 and to grow with reasonable rapidity than any we had hitherto 

 tried. The trees recommended were the Locust, Catalpa, 

 Eucalyptus viinittalis or Manna Gimi, the Eucalyptus leucoxy- 

 lou or Blue Gum of South Australia, and the Eucalyptus cory- 

 nocalyx or Sugar Gum. Taking all things into consideration, 

 the last is probably the best. Our recommendations were 

 largely based on the experiments of the forest department of 

 South Australia, under the able direction of Mr. J. Edine 

 Brown. His department has planted a number of stations 

 with trees in the dry interior of Australia, where the climatic 

 conditions bear a close resemblance to those in the drier por- 

 tion of our state. While in these extreme stations the Blue 

 Gum of Tasmania {E. globulus) did not do well, the other trees 

 named flourished beyond expectation. These trees and even 

 their seeds were not to be had in this state. The Board, there- 

 fore, imported seeds from Australia, and distributed them free 

 throughout the state. Many successful plantations are the re- 

 sult. No tree has been found to grow more rapidly in situa- 

 tions suited to it than the common Blue Gum. Experiments 

 by a member of the Board show, however, that there are other 

 trees not very inferior in this respect, while much more valu- 

 able in other qualities. Two trees planted from the pot, six 

 inches high, in the middle of August, a year ago, at Santa 

 Monica, nineteen months from the seeds and fourteen months 

 from the transplanting, are now respectively fourteen feet six 

 and a half inches and fourteen feet six and three-quarters inches 

 in height. One of these trees is a Eucalyptus corynocalyx 

 (Sugar Giun) and the tallest a Eucalyptus viminalis (Manna 

 Gum). A tree of the E. gomphocephala (Tooart Gum) of the 

 same planting is fourteen feet one inch high. It must be said, 

 however, that the soil and climate of Santa Monica are es- 

 pecially favorable to almost all forest trees. 



Periodical Literature. 



Professor L. Wittmack, of the Landwirthschaftliche Hoch- 

 schule at Berlin, has recently contributed to the Berichte der 

 deutschen botanischen Gesellschaft an important paper on 

 " Die Heiniath der Bohtien und der Kurbisse" (The Home of 

 the Bean and the Pumpkin). He says that as early as the year 

 1879 he expressed the opinion that the Garden Bean of Europe 

 {Phaseolus vulgaris) was not of Old World origin, but came 

 from the New World, the remains from the ancient Peruvian 

 mummies brought from the necropolis at Ancon by Drs. 

 Reiss and Stiibel, entrusted to him for identification, having 

 led him to that belief. Later, in the meeting of naturalists at 

 Danzig, and before the Agriculturists' Club at Beriin, he had 

 spoken more positively. He had at the same time endeavored 

 to point out that what the ancients had called Phaselos, Fase- 

 olus, etc., was in all probability a sort of Dolichos, and Pro- 

 fessor Kornicke had, in consequence, further shown that it 

 was Dolichos Sinejisis, or a variety of the same, D. melanop- 

 thalmos. Professor Wittmack further observed that the word 

 frizol or frisol, from which the Spanish frijol, the German fiso- 

 len, etc., had come, was an American word, and, according to 

 Reiss, was of West Indian origin ; unfortunately, it had an ac- 

 cidental resemblance to the Greek and Latin phaseolus in 

 sound. 



Alphonse De Candolle had shown that Phaseolus vulgaris 

 had no Sanskrit name, and therefore its origin must be in 

 western Asia, but there it had never been found. It is, there- 



fore, almost incomprehensible that the idea of its American 

 origin should not have been conceived, particularly when, out 

 of the sixty different sorts of Phaseolus there are twenty-eight 

 native to tirazil alone, mostly of the large varieties. Had the 

 old writers who relate the story of the Spanish conquest been 

 studied, the opinions would have been different. Acosta 

 mentions two kinds of Beans, Garcilasso de la Vega speaks of 

 three or four kinds. Oviedo (1525-38) alludes to them in San 

 Domingo, the other islands, and still more on the continent ; 

 in the province of Nagranda (Nicaragua) he has seen hun- 

 dreds of bushels gathered, and in another place he observes 

 that they are indigenous. Cabeza de Vaca found frisoles in 

 Florida in iSczo, and, in 1835, in the northern limits of his jour- 

 ney in New Mexico and Sonora. He mentions them repeat- 

 edly, mostly in connection with Pumpkins. Pedro de Cieza 

 de Leon describes them as cultivated in Popaya (Colombia). 



Alphonse De Candolle, in his classic work " L'origine des 

 plantes cultivees," after citing the observation of Professor 

 Wittmack, says : i. Phaseolus vulgaris has not long been cul- 

 tivated in India, south-western Asia and Egypt. 2. It is not 

 certain whether it was known in Europe before the discovery 

 of America. 3. At this epoch the number of varieties in 

 European gardens suddenly increased, and all authors began 

 to mention it. 4. The majority of the varieties of the genus 

 exist in South America. 5. Seeds apparently belonging to 

 this kind have been found in Peruvian graves of uncertain age 

 (meaning whether before or after the conquest), but mingled 

 with many plants, all of American origin. At the end of his 

 book he places Phaseolus vulgaris, to be sure, among the three 

 plants whose nativity is either wholly unknown or uncertain. 

 The two others are Cucurbita moschata and C. ficifolia, 

 Bouche (C melanosperma, Al. Br.). 



In the meantime two high authorities have likewise pro 

 nounced for the American origin of the Garden Bean — Asa- 

 Gray and Hammond Trumbull. According to them, Colum- 

 bus found, three weeks after his arrival in the New World, 

 near Nuevitas, in Cuba, fields of faxones and f abas, very dif- 

 ferent from those of Spain, and two days later, on the north 

 coast of Cuba, again land "well cultivated with fexoes and 

 habas, very different from ours." Faxones or fexoes are, as 

 the editor of the journal, Navarrete, notes, the same as "fre- 

 joles" or " judias," the Spanish name for Phaseolus vulgaris. 



De Soto found in 1539, on his landing in Florida near Tampa 

 Bay, fields of Maize, Beans, and Pumpkins in great quantities, 

 and the same elsewhere. Jacques Cartier found Maize and 

 Beans among the Indians at the mouth of the St. Lawrence 

 in 1608. Lescarbot speaks of various kinds of Beans among 

 the Indians of Maine, Virginia, and Florida, planted between 

 the hills of Maize ; Lawson, in his voyage to Carolina, 1700- 

 1708, says that the Kidney Beans were here before the English 

 came, very abundant in the Maize-fields. The " Bushel Beans," 

 a wild kind, very flat, white and with a purple spotdng, were 

 trained on poles. Asa Gray and Trumbull here say in paren- 

 thesis {Phaseolus multiflorus ?), but Professor Wittmack thinks 

 P. lunatus must have been meant. Lawson mentions further : 

 Miraculous Pulse, so-called on account of the long pod and 

 the great yield, very pleasant in taste; and further, Bonavies, 

 Calavancies, Nanticoches, and an abundance of other kinds 

 with pods, too nimierous to mention, which we found the In- 

 dians possessed when we first setded America. 



The Beans in the Northern States were named Indian Beans, 

 in contrast to the Sow Beans introduced by the English, which 

 were called Garden Beans. 



In no Egyptian sarcophagus and in no pile-structure of 

 Europe have Garden Beans been found, says Professor Witt- 

 mack ; whereas the Sow Beans have been, though only re- 

 cently, and very few in the Egyptian graves, since they were 

 regarded as impure. He also points to Sow Beans in the col- 

 lections of Schliemann and Virchow at Hissarlik (Troya), and 

 by Schliemann at Herakleia. 



" On the other hand, I have now had the good fortune to find 

 prehistoric seeds of Phaseolus vulgaris from North American 

 graves. At the International Congress of Americanists held 

 in Berlin from October 2d to 5th, Professor Edward S. Morse, 

 of Salem, and Mr. Sylvester Baxter, both delegates of the Hem- 

 enway Expedition, showed a portion of the collecdons made 

 by that archajological undertaking, which was insdtuted by a 

 lady of sciendfic enthusiasm, Mrs. Hemenway, for exploration 

 in the south-west of North America (Arizona). Among the 

 specimens were some examples of Maize from Los Muertos 

 on the Rio Salado, in loose, charred kernels, together with a 

 thin cob exacdy resembling the prehistoric Maize from the 

 mounds in Ohio. But who can depict my astonishment when, 

 with the permission of Dr. Uhle, of the Museum fiir Volker- 

 kunde, I examined the littde box of Maize somewhat more 



