July 



1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



303 



feet high, and sold for #300. Around the State Capitol 

 Building in Sacramento are many large and fine Camellia- 

 bushes, and venders of the flowers crowd the legislative 

 halls. It is hard to rank any one of the Coast Range cities 

 as first in the matter of Camellias. San Rafael, Santa Cruz, 

 Santa Barbara and others are brilliant in vv^inter with this 

 classic flower, which is sometimes in outdoor bloom from 

 December to the end of May. 



Chrysanthemums, Lilies, Irises and Lotuses are every 

 year more extensively planted in California, and Japanese 

 sources supply a large part of the stock. They are not 

 likely to become in any sense broadly characteristic of 

 California gardens, except as they are grown with especial 

 ease here, and so may usurp a larger share of space. 

 Madame Chrysantheme seems to place her seal on the 

 whole autumn and early winter here, so long is the season 

 of blossoming. Like the willful little woman of Pierre 

 Loti's Japanese novel, she is both a fascination and a dis- 

 appointment, m 1 tj } 07 ■ 



Bf-riteiey, Caiit. Uiaiies Hoivard iiliinn. 



Oil of Birch. 



IT is not generally known that the Sweet Birch, Black 

 Birch or Cherry Birch, Betula lenta, which is an impor- 

 tant timber tree, is also of considerable economic value for its 

 aromatic constituent, the oil of birch. Many of the mountain 

 forests of eastern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey 

 are abundantly supplied with this Birch. Instead of a tree 

 fifty to sixty feet in height, it is oftener found on the 

 mountain sides as a shrub from ten to twenty-five feet 

 high. In Schuylkill, Carbon and Luzerne counties, Pennsyl- 

 vania, numerous distillers are located, who manufacture 

 the oil in conjunction with that of wintergreen. The two 

 oils being chemically and physically identical, they are 

 made and sold indiscriminately as oil of vi'intergreen, tea- 

 berry or gaultheria. 



During the summer months wintergreen is employed in 

 the manufacture of the oil, since it can then be collected by 

 the cheap labor of women and children, but in winter and 

 spring, when the ground is covered with snow. Birch is 

 used almost exclusively. The distiller locates where he 

 can get good water and plenty of the Birch. The latter is 

 cut when from ten to twenty-five feet in height ; the 

 stumps sprout again, and in five to ten years are ready for 

 a second cutting. The trees are hauled or dragged to the 

 distillery, where, by means of a water-wheel and a trip- 

 hammer device, in which one or two heavy knives take 

 the place of the hammer, the trunks and branches are cut 

 into pieces one or two inches in length. The stills hold 

 from half a ton to a ton, and consist of wooden boxes 

 with copper bottoms,' and in some cases copperheads also. 

 They are filled to within tvi^elve inches of the top, water is 

 run in to one-third the contents of the still, and after 

 macerating overnight distillation is commenced by means 

 of a wood-fire. The vapor is conducted into a copper or 

 tin worm, placed in a barrel, and kept cooled by a con- 

 tinuous stream of water from a cold mountain stream. 

 The steam is condensed in this coil and issues below as 

 mixed oil and water. The oil in this case, being heavier 

 than water, settles to the bottom of the receiver, which is 

 usually a quart fruit-jar, while the water is conducted off 

 and run into a barrel to be used again with the next lot of 

 wood. 



The yield of oil of birch is about four pounds from one 

 ton of the wood — that, is from two-tenths to three-tenths of 

 one per cent. Some distillers state that the yield is 

 greatest in July and August, bvit in a visit to Luzerne County 

 in 1890 I gathered the impression from those consulted 

 that the greatest yield was obtained in the months of April 

 and May. All agree that very little oil is obtained in Oc- 

 tober, when the leaves are falling. In the vicinity of White 

 Haven, in the same county, there are from six to eight dis- 

 tilleries that produced in 1890 a total of some three or four 

 thousand pounds of the oil. Since then the artificial oil of 



wintergreen, made from salicylic acid and wood alcohol, 

 has been placed on the market at such a price as to very 

 much lessen the production of oil of birch. While the 

 artificial oil is not identical with the oils of birch and win- 

 tergreen, yet it is so near that only an expert can detect the 

 difference. 



The production of the natural oils commenced in Lu- 

 zerne County about the year 1865, and, as they are prefer- 

 able for medicinal use, there will probably continue to be 

 a demand sufficient to maintain the industry in its present 



proportions. 



College o£ Pliarmacy, Philadelphia. 



Henry Tiivihle. 



Notes from a Botanic Garden. — L 



IN a very modest way the beginning of a botanic garden 

 was made here in 1877, along a shady bank near the 

 brook and not far from the greenhouses. The garden 

 now under consideration consists of three acres, lying on 

 the north bank of the Cedar River and extending to the 

 north-east on both sides of a small brook. This area does 

 not include the arboretum, nor the greenhouses, nor the 

 adjoining lawn and flower-beds and plats of shrubbery, 

 with their numerous varieties and races. The space of 

 which I now speak consists largely of the higher portion 

 of the river flats, mostly above high-water mark. On the 

 banks are a variety of shrubs and small trees of nature's 

 own planting. The artificial portion of this garden, then, 

 consists mainly of hardy herbs, with a few shrubs — 1,200 

 to 1,500 species. At first, considerable pains was taken to 

 make, by means of bowlder stones, small pockets a foot or 

 two in diameter for each species, but in dry times the small 

 plants wilted, while the woody growth, rooting deeper, 

 absorbed the moisture and thrived. At present, the sloping 

 banks are devoted almost exclusively to the families con- 

 taining many woody plants, while the herbs have slid 

 down to the low flat land, which most of them seem to 

 like very well. 



In this new state and in this utilitarian age at the oldest 

 agricultural college in America, we are still occasionally 

 called on to rise and explain the uses of a botanic garden. 

 I am happy to state, however, that this question has never 

 been asked by people who visited the garden. Inquiries 

 have frequently been made by people from the country, 

 the village and the city ; comments without end have been 

 overheard, and with scarcely an exception this " novel sort 

 of a garden " awakens their interest at once. We aim to 

 grow (by no means always successfully) a plat of each 

 species two to six feet in diameter, large enough to fill the 

 eye, that the botanist, the artist, the florist may see how 

 he likes it. \M-iere the piece is rather large there is much 

 less danger of losing the whole than where but little is 

 grown. The farmer can compare some of the newer un- 

 tried sorts of grasses or other forage-plants by the side of 

 his old favorites, or he can see behind a label containing 

 its name some weed-pest that has lately found its way into 

 his neighborhood. The bee-keeper looks for the plants and 

 their names where honey is gathered in most abundance. 

 The entomologist learns to look for certain insects on the 

 plants of a certain family or species. At a farmers' insti- 

 tute last winter no topic attracted greater attention than the 

 mention of a family of mints represented by some fifty or 

 more species in our botanic garden. Several present ex- 

 pressed a determination to pay the garden a visit for the 

 purpose of looking for something new and promising for 

 distillation. They^^ hoped we would extend the list by 

 introductions from other countries. 



Many kinds of pretty wild plants are not well known by 

 people in general, especially since the woods have been cut 

 away or pastured and the swamps drained and placed 

 under cultivation, or frequently burned over. Even along 

 the roadside, in many places the fences have been removed 

 and grasses, grains and potatoes come nearly to the tracks 

 made by the wheels. In the vicinity of college or high- 

 school, the herbarium fiend ransacks the wild places for 



