504 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 356. 



duced on a small tree thirty to forty feet in height, having 

 a dense growth of oblong or lanceolate leaves from a few 

 inches to a foot in length, glossy, and serrated with fine 

 prickly teeth. The wood is finely grained and a reddish 

 color, resembling our cherry. It is highly prized for cabi- 

 net-work, but as the nuts are even more valuable, furnish- 

 ing a nutritious food to the natives, timber-cutters are not 

 allowed to fell the trees. The kernel has the flavor of a 

 Brazil or Hazel nut, and the shell is jet-black, polished, 

 and of iron hardness. The shape is nearly square, with 

 rounded corners and flattened top and bottom. A perfect 

 letter C is contained on one side of the nut, as shown in the 

 illustration. A groove surrounds it from edge to edge of 

 the letter. Like the acorn, it is indehiscent, the seed being 

 liberated only by the decay of the shell. The tree is a 

 native of northern New South Wales and Queensland. 



In a bulletin of miscellaneous information issued in Octo- 

 ber last by the Royal Botanic Gardens of the island of 

 Trinidad, it is said that the gardens contain a specimen of 

 the Queensland nut-tree, which has borne fruit in fair quan- 

 tities since 1891. The tree is twenty-five or thirty feet in 

 height, and is believed to have become thoroughly accli- 

 matized. Plants are being raised from the seed as fast as 

 possible, for it is considered a valuable acquisition. 



The tree does not grow on the island outside of the gar- 

 dens, nor have I been able .to learn that it has ever been 

 discovered on any other island or coast of this hemisphere. 

 It is doubtful, therefore, just where the occasional speci- 

 mens found on the Florida coast come from. Probably 

 some of the nuts have found their way by oceanic currents 

 or in the crops of certain birds, perhaps even in the stomach 

 of fishes, to some locality in the West Indies, where they 

 have taken root and grown to fruitful trees, from whence 

 come the few specimens. 



The large bean in the upper left-hand corner of fig. 79, 

 No. 6, is called the Liver Bean (Entada scandens), from 

 the liver-like color. The woody climber which bears 

 it often reaches the tops of the tallest trees. The pods 

 are woody, and attain a length of from two to four feet, 

 and a breadth of three to four inches. They contain from 

 ten to thirty seeds, often two inches in diameter. One in 

 my collection is seven and a half inches in circumference. 

 This genus is common to Australia and many tropical 

 countries, including the West Indies. The kernels are 

 used in some countries for washing the hair and crimping 

 linen. 



The iron-like hardness of all of these beans and nuts is 

 proof that Nature intended the therms to have special pro- 

 tection. And it is needed, for the wide distribution of the 

 genera is effected by long voyages in ocean currents, often 

 subjected to delays on sandy beaches under a blazing sun, 

 which would destroy the vitality of most seeds. 



The manufacture of sea-bean jewelry has been a regular 

 and paying business in Jacksonville and St. Augustine, 

 Florida, for many years. When first found on the beaches, 

 among seaweed and shells, most of the species are very 

 rough. This roughness is removed, first, by filing with a flat 

 file, followed by vigorous rubbing on fine sand-paper. 

 They are next held on a rapidly revolving felt wheel, on 

 which powdered emery has been sprinkled. The final 

 gloss, which discloses the delicate colors and mottles, is 

 produced by a felt wheel on which a very delicate polish- 

 ing substance has been rubbed. The jewelers have 

 various ways of mounting the beans and nuts for watch- 

 charms, sleeve-buttons, etc., with initials, monograms, 

 compasses, etc., and readily sell them as souvenirs of a 

 visit to the land of sunny skies. 



Broouiand, d. c. Uiarles H. toe. 



The snow hangs on the Pine-trees as the fruit of the season. 

 In those twigs which the wind has preserved naked there is a 

 warmer green for the contrast. The whole tree exhibits a 

 kind of interior ami household comfort, a sheltered and 

 covert aspect. It has the snug, inviting look of a cot- 

 tage on the moors buried in snow. — From Thoreau' s Winter 

 Journal. 



New or Little-known Plants. 

 The Muskeag Spruce. 



CLOSE to the open water that remains uncovered by 

 the growth of sedges and sphagnum that is filling 

 or covering many of the forest-lakes of Minnesota, 

 little Spruce-trees are stubbornly existing, although they 

 have no mineral earth to grow upon, and one may put 

 them under water by standing upon the bog at their roots. 

 They grow very slowly, the rings of annual accretions of 

 wood on the trunks being sometimes so small as to be 

 invisible without a microscope, and these little, but old, 

 trees are found bearing cones when less than three feet high. 

 After this time nearly all the energy of the tree seems to be 

 devoted to fruiting, and the cone-bearing branches become 

 the only vigorous ones. These are densely crowded near 

 the top of the tree, while the trunk below is often destitute 

 of living branches, although unshaded and growing far 

 from other trees. These dense tufts of dark branches, like 

 plumes upon poles, present a strange spectacle to the trav- 

 eler who, for the first time, crosses the larger Muskeags, 

 especially at twilight, for he seems to be looking over a 

 weird procession stretching off mile after mileuntil lost in 

 the distance. 



In the smaller Muskeags there is a marked gradation of 

 size from the smallest seedlings by the water in the centre 

 of the bog to the tall, slender trees, sometimes sixty feet 

 high, upon the shores of the basin. As the soil on which 

 these trees grow becomes more firm, branches are devel- 

 oped more freely upon the lower trunk, but such branches 

 are always weak and have a tendency to droop. Some of 

 the tips rise to a level with the base of the branch, but 

 most of the branches fall far below, even hanging like 

 vines against the trunk and shooting out horizontal or 

 slightly ascending branchlets at the tips. Occasionally, 

 for some reason connected with the history of the individual 

 tree, no doubt, a branch or two toward the top has an un- 

 usual development and is apt to form a grotesque figure in 

 bold relief against the sky. 



While the form that occupies the Muskeag is uncouth 

 and weird, the trees that grow on fertile, but always moist, 

 upland often have much beauty. They are usually found 

 growing in beds of Sphagnum and Ledum, with Betula 

 pumila, Alnus, Salix and Spira'a, but are sometimes seen 

 on higher ground with Larix larcina, Abies balsamea, 

 and even with Betula lutea and B. papyrifera. The cones 

 of both forms are densely clustered upon the upper branches 

 and trunk in such a manner as to be protected by the later- 

 grown branches. They seem to open the second year, and re- 

 main attached to the tree many years. They are from half an 

 inch to an inch in length, and have scales that are thin and 

 light-colored upon the edges, where they wrinkle, and ap- 

 pear ragged as they dry before opening. The leaves of 

 the fruiting branches are dense, thick and stiff, a quarter of 

 an inch long, prominently ribbed above and below, and 

 have four or more rows of stomata along each side of 

 the lower rib. The leaves of the lower or non-fruiting 

 branches are a half to seven-sixteenths of an inch long, 

 much more slender and less dense than those upon the 

 fruiting branches. The young branchlets have a dense 

 woolly pubescence that remains several years. It is buff 

 at first, but changes to brown. The bark of the trunk is 

 very shelly, and when fresh is yellowish brown in color. 



The trees grow slowly to a height of sixty feet, are cylin- 

 drical in form, except for the dense conical top of fruiting 

 branches, and rarely exceed eight feet in diameter. The 

 diameter of the largest trunks noticed is about ten inches. 

 Is this merely the Black Spruce grown under adverse cir- 

 cumstances near its north-western limit? The locality 

 where the pendulous form seems to be most prevalent, 

 and where the photograph (see page 505) was taken, is 

 on a gently sloping but wet sand plain once covered by 

 the waters of Lake Superior, when some four hundred feet 

 above their present level, and near the moraine that 



