386 



Garden and Forest. 



[October io, i8 



can be secured quickly in this way. A moderately severe 

 pruning of the male trees made in the spring- every second 

 year will generally have the effect of stimulating growth 

 to such an extent that the trees will not flower. 



Our contemporary hardly does justice, however, to the 

 great economic value of this tree, which is surpassed, in 

 the value of the material which it yields, by few North 

 American frees ; and certainly there is no tree which 

 can be made to grow in the United States which can pro- 

 duce so much valuable wood in such a short time. The 

 wood of the Ailanthus must be compared in heat pro- 

 ducing properties with white oak, black walnut and birch. 

 It is less valuable than hickory, but hickory — the best fuel, 

 all things considered, our forests furnish — makes a no more 

 agreeable, although a somewhat hotter fire, than ailanthus, 

 which burns steadily and slowly without snapping, giving 

 out a clear, bright flame and leaving a good bed of coals. 

 The amount of ash left after the combustion of the wood is 

 remarkably small. The great value of the Ailanthus, how- 

 ever, as a source of fuel supply, lies in the fact that it makes 

 wood, even in poor soil, more than twice as rapidly as any 

 of our trees which produce fuel of anything like the same 

 value. The fact has not been demonstrated by experi- 

 ment, but it is safe to say that an acre of ground planted 

 with Ailanthus would yield at the end of thirty years more 

 than twice as much fuel, in bulk and in actual heat pro- 

 duct, as the same piece of ground planted with Hickory or 

 Oak. 



Ailanthus wood, in spite of the rapid growth which this 

 tree makes, is both heavy and very strong. It neither 

 shrinks nor warps in seasoning, and as material for the 

 cabinet-maker it has few superiors among woods grown 

 without the tropics. In color it is a clear, bright yellow, 

 and although coarse grained, it can be made to take a fine 

 polish. 



Take it all in all, for hardiness and rapidity of growth, 

 for the power to adapt itself to the dirt and smoke, the 

 dust and drought of cities, for the ability to thrive in the 

 poorest soil, for beauty and for usefulness, this tree, which 

 the Abbe d'Incaville brought back with him from China 

 more than a century ago, is one of the most useful which 

 can be grown in this climate. 



Notes from a Naturalist in Mexico. 



T7IRST impressions of a new country are often deceptive, 

 ■*■ and Mexico is such a large and physically varied region, 

 that it would take months of travel to see even the most inter- 

 esting parts of it ; but having now passed through about 1,500 

 miles of the republic, the impressions made on one who has 

 spent years in Eastern travel, but had never seen the New 

 World, may not be without some interest. A tropical country 

 without tropical heat or vegetation is, perhaps, what one 

 would be inclined to say, and certainly the really tropical parts 

 of Mexico, as regards natural productions, are very small as 

 compared with the bare and treeless highlands. One might, 

 however, say the same of India if one went from Peshawur to 

 Bomfjay in the cold weather, and, as Wallace has so well 

 pointed out, really tropical vegetation requires conditions 

 which only exist in limited areas of the east coast and larger 

 parts of the western slopes of the highlands of Mexico. 



From El Paso, on the United States frontier of New Mexico, 

 to the City of Mexico, one passes for sixty hours, at a slow 

 railway speed, through interminable plains of an elevation 

 varying from 4,000 to 8,000 feet, bounded by low, treeless and 

 desolate-looking mountains, without seeing a single town of 

 any real importance, a single glimpse of forest, or a green 

 spot of earth excepting what is made so by irrigation; and the 

 few small rivers crossed on the route are half or quite dry. 

 The only striking- plants seen from the railway are gigantic 

 Yuccas and a few species of Opuntia, Cereus and other Cac- 

 taceous plants ; but even these are not half so numerous or 

 varied as one supposes from the great numbers which exist 

 in the northern part of Mexico. When at last one arrives at the 

 so-called Valley of Mexico — which is not a valley in tlie usual 

 sense of the word, but rather a high-lying plateau, containing 

 large lakes which receive the drainage of the hills around, 

 and have no natural outlet — one expects to see a view of un- 

 paralleled grandeur, liut this is, like many other popular im- 



pressions, by no means the case. The distant cone of Popo- 

 catapetl and the more picturesque mountain of Ixtaccihuatl, 

 which, though somewhat lower, has more snow at present on 

 it, are no doubt very high and remarkable n-iountains ; but 

 their distance, the haze through which tliev are seen and the 

 want of beautiful foreground in the view, make the scene, in 

 my opinion, infinitely inferior in grandeur and in impressive- 

 ness to many of far less reputation, both in the Alps, the 

 Pyrenees and the Himalayas. As to the climate, one must 

 not be too critical at this season, especially wlien one has just 

 left a winter of unusual severity, both in the United States 

 and Europe, but it is not my idea of a tropical or even a very 

 nice climate. Bright sun and continual almost cloudless sky, 

 cool air, even cold in the morning, with glare and dust, are 

 tlie characteristics on the plateau and highlands of Mexico 

 for five or six months of the year. Pine forests, which I had 

 always expected to find one of the features of the country, are 

 diminishingyearly through the unchecked devastations of fire, 

 charcoal-burners, goats and sheep, and I have not yet seen 

 a tract of forest which has not been much injured in this 

 way, or of which the more accessible parts have not been, in 

 a great measure, destroyed. To find this one must go up to 

 8,000 or 9,000 feet on the slopes in the environs of the City 

 of Mexico, so tempting to a naturalist at this season. We 

 lost no time in going on to Orizaba, about two-thirds of the 

 way in distance to the east coast, and at little more than half 

 the elevation of Mexico City. Here, in the midst of Coffee 

 plantations. Sugar Cane and Bananas, with the volcanic peak 

 of Orizaba 17,000 feet high at a short distance, one can find, 

 by looking for it, some really charming bits of forest, but 

 always in deep gorges or barrancas, and never in easily acces- 

 sible situations. Birds, as in the Valley of Mexico, are 

 numerous and varied, but not especially striking in color, size 

 or form. Butterflies are fairly numerous, but mostly belong 

 to the family of Hesperidae, which alone are common at this 

 season. Moths, excepting a few da^'-flying vEgeriadse, are 

 scarce, and other insects, excepting Dragon-flies, not very 

 showy or nunierous. Orchids are fairly abundant, but few 

 showy ones are now in flower, and though the gardens and 

 plantations round the town are full of beautiful, showy plants 

 in flower, of a more or less tropical character, such as 

 Hibiscus, Erythrina and Datura, yet most of them are exotics. 

 A fortnight's stay in Orizaba enabled me to explore the 

 environs pretty thoroughly without finding a single spot 

 within five or six miles which could be called a first-class 

 collecting ground, though, at the sanie time, I feel sure that 

 Orizaba would yield a very large nuniber.of plants, birds and 

 insects to a resident collector. Tuxpango, about three hours 

 to the south-east, is the best place I found, and here are some 

 very picturesque waterfalls and a lovely tropical gorge, Avith 

 some fine Coffee plantations under the shade of the forest, 

 which pleased us more than any spot yet visited. On the 

 moiuitains around Orizaba, which, however, are very steep 

 and pathless, there are some rich and interesting spots in 

 which I found a few fine plants aiid rare insects ; but the sky, 

 though generally bright in the niorning hours, usually clouded 

 by noon, and the weather was not nearly so hot as one would 

 expect in latitude 19°, at 4,000 feet elevation. 



Going on from Orizaba towards Vera Cruz, one passes through 

 a very rich and fertile country, where Bananas, Pineapples, 

 Coffee and Sugar are largely grown about Cordoba, and here 

 in the plantation of M. Tonel, a Belgian gentleman, who has 

 been settled in Mexico for many years, I saw a large number 

 of species of Palms, and very many interesting and beautiful 

 tropical and sub-tropical plants. Indeed, I should say this was 

 liy far the most interesting garden in Mexico, as the proprietor 

 has a Belgian gardener, and goes to mucli trouble and ex- 

 pense in making his plantation rather a botanic garden than 

 an ordinary Coffee plantation. But still there is no virgin 

 forest until one gets on towards Attoyac, where the railway 

 passes through some scenery of the true tropical character, 

 and in the few hours I was able to spend here I saw what I had 

 l>een hoping for so long. As, however, Attoyac is said to be 

 very unhealthy at all seasons, and there is no accommodation 

 for a stay, I could only regret my inaliilify to give it a thorough 

 exploration, though probably there is no great amount of nov- 

 elty to be expected, this part of Mexico having been better 

 worked by naturalists than any other. Below Attoyac you get 

 into the dry plains bordering the coast, which are, for the most 

 liart, covered with low, thorny or scrubby forest or coarse, 

 wiry grass, and infested with small insects called pinoHllos, 

 which, judging from the amount of precaution and trouble the 

 inhabitants take to get rid of theni, must be very disagreeable 

 indeed. A gentlenian who got into the tram-car on our way 

 up to Jalapa, two stations out of ^^era Cruz, had got an-iongst 



