June 3, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



255 



out great force and a complicated engine, which Nature does 

 without sensible motion ; it steals up as freely as the water de- 

 scends ; the reason of this is obscure as yett to naturalists." 

 Various theories which Wren then quotes are not explained by 

 his biographer, but, she tells us, he shows by a little marginal 

 drawing "that the onely Vicissitudes of heat and cold in ye 

 aire is sufficient to raise the sap to the height of the loftiest 

 trees." Mechanical explanations are then given to refute the 

 idea that there is "a secret motion in nature contrary to that 

 by which plants aspire upwards." And in conclusion Wren 

 says: "But though I have shown how the sap may be me- 

 chanically raised from the Root to the top of the loftiest trees, 

 yett how it comes to be varyed according to the particular 

 nature of the Tree by a Fermentation in the Root ; how the 

 Raine water entering the Root acquires a spirit that keeps it 

 from freezing, but also gives it such distinguishing tastes and 

 qualities, is beyond mechanical Philosophy to describe and may 

 require a great collection of Phenomena with a large history of 

 plants to shew how they expand the leaves and produce the 

 Seed and Fruit from the same Raine water so wonderfully 

 diversified and continued since the first Creation." 



Special students of such questions would be glad to see the 

 explanatory passages omitted from these quotations, although, 

 of course, we can understand how they did not find a place in 

 a general biography of the architect. But it is certainly inter- 

 esting to discover that a man so practical and sensible as 

 Wren, seems to have anticipated a day when even such secrets 

 as the transmutation of inert into living matter would be ex- 

 plained. Unfortunately, our "collection of Phenomena" and 

 our histories of plants, vastly though they have increased 

 during the past two centuries, have brought us no nearer to the 

 reading of riddles of this sort. 



When discussing the condition of the churches of London 

 and the best way of repairing them, Sir Christopher once 

 wrote : "As to roofs, good oak is certainly the best, because it 

 will bear some negligence. The churchwardens' care may be 

 defective in speedy mending drips ; they usually whitewash 

 the church, and set up their names, but neglect to preserve 

 the roof over their heads. . . . Next to oak is good yellow 

 deal, which is a timber of length, and light, and makes excel- 

 lent work at first, but, if neglected, will speedily perish ; espe- 

 cially if gutters (which is a general fault with builders) be made 

 to run upon the principal rafters, the ruin of the church may 

 be sudden. Our sea-service for oak and the wars in the North 

 Sea make timber at present of excessive price. I suppose, ere 

 long, we must have recourse to the West Indies, where most 

 excellent timber may be had for cutting and fetching." 



Wren lived, as I have said, before the time when naturalistic 

 methods of gardening art were introduced, and very long be- 

 fore the establishment of great rural cemeteries for the recep- 

 tion of the dead of cities. In his day it was customary to bury 

 in churchyards and actually within the walls of churches, even 

 in the densest parts of London. But he was too intelligent a 

 man not to protest against so dangerous a practice, and, in 

 one of the many reports on architectural and urban questions 

 which he wrote, we find what his conception was with regard 

 to the proper disposal of the dead. If they are not interred in 

 or near the city churches, he says, " It will be enquired, where 

 then shall be the burials ? I answer, in cemeteries seated in 

 the outskirts of the town. ... A piece of ground of two 

 acres in the fields will be purchased for much less than two 

 roods among the buildings ; this being enclosed with a strong 

 brick wall, and having a walk round, the two cross walks de- 

 cently planted with yew trees, the four 'quarters may serve 

 four parishes, where the dead need not be disturbed at the 

 pleasure of the sexton or piled four or five upon one another 

 or bones thrown out to make room. ... It may be con- 

 sidered further, that if the cemeteries be thus thrown out 

 into the fields, they will bound the excessive growth of the 

 city with a graceful border, which is now encircled with 

 scavengers' dung-stalls." To-day we should hardly consider 

 such cemeteries a "graceful border" to a city, although, it 

 must be confessed, too many in America are encircled by the 

 more unpleasant heaps of refuse with which Sir Christopher 

 desired to do away. His words convey, I may add, an exact 

 picture of many cemeteries still in use near European towns ; 

 but, though they are much larger than the churchyards which 

 preceded them, the horrible results of overcrowding cited 

 by Wren as existing in such yards may often be witnessed 

 within their wider yet now insufficient and inelastic walls. I 

 have myself seen, in German cemeteries in the outskirts of 

 cities of the first class, even the piling of three or four bodies 

 one upon another, and this not in portions devoted to the 

 poor, but in lots owned by aristocratic families. 



New York. M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



Native Shrubs of California. — VI. 



A GAINST the five or six native species of Plum with which 

 -**- the Atlantic states are credited, the Pacific coast has 

 only one, though this appears in different localities under two 

 very well marked varieties. The type is Primus snbcordata, 

 Benth. (PI. Hartav., 108). The variety Kelloggii, Lemmon 

 (Piltonia, ii., 67), is not well known, and may possibly, at some 

 future day, be admitted in the rank of a species. But the 

 species, in the typical form, is common in many parts of Cali- 

 fornia, though along the seaboard it is so rare as to have 

 escaped the notice of all the early explorers, Menzies, Chamisso, 

 Douglas, and even Nutlall. Not until the year 1847, when 

 Hartweg botanized up the Sacramento to the foothills of the 

 Sierra, was our Wild Plum brought to the knowledge of 

 botanists. 



It is a common observation that, in many genera of plants 

 common to the Old World and the New, it is the Pacific coast 

 species, rather than those of Atlantic America, which make 

 the nearest approach to Old World types ; and this holds good 

 in respect to the Californian Plum. It is more intimately re- 

 lated to Prumts domestica and other European or Asian Plums 

 than are any of the Atlantic coast species. Indeed, the Atlan- 

 tic group, by their divergence from the Plum-tree genus in 

 one or two particulars, were what led certain eminent botan- 

 ists to regard Plums and Cherries as congeneric. In the Old 

 World the Plums, as a genus, have this fine mark, that their 

 leaves are rolled up from edge to edge in the bud, while the 

 Cherries all have theirs folded together lengthwise. But all 

 the Plum-trees indigenous to Atlantic North America have 

 been found to agree with the Cherry-trees in that their foliage 

 is conduplicate in the bud. Our Prumts snbcordata is not at 

 agreement with its American cousins in this regard, but has 

 that rounded foliage, convolute in the bud, which betrays its 

 closer affinity with the species of another continent. In the 

 color, texture and flavor of its fruit it is, however, quite like 

 the other American Wild Plums, and the quality is variable, 

 according to the locality. And, although exotic Plums are 

 cultivated with all success in almost every part of California, 

 the improvement of our native species has not been neglected. 

 In some instances cultivated seedlings from this parentage 

 are said to have already yielded fruit very superior in size and 

 quality to the last products of the wild tree. 



As above intimated, the shrub is not common except in the 

 lower altitudes of the Sierra Nevada. There, and especially 

 toward the northern parts of the state, it is plentiful along 

 streams, where,- attaining the shape and dimensions of a small 

 tree, it forms considerable thickets, and, in places remote from 

 the older and fruit-growing settlements, the wild plums are 

 valued, and are, in fact, not far inferior in quality to some of 

 the domestic sorts. In the coast range I know of no locality 

 where the species is at nil common. One small clump of it, 

 in a canon a few miles east of Oakland, and another on the 

 grounds of the University at Berkeley — in a secluded nook, 

 where it is no doubt spontaneous — are all I have been able to 

 record as Bay-district stations for it. These bushes liower in 

 March, and the blossoms, of rather large size for those of a 

 wild Plum, in fading assume a rosy tint, such as I have not 

 otherwise noticed in Plum blossoms. 



Neither the Atlantic slope of North America nor the Pacific 

 slope proper has any native species of the Peach and Almond 

 genus, Amygdalus ; but the Mexican region, including its north- 

 ern extension, the Interior Basin of the United States territory, 

 has, perhaps, three or four. At least one of these, Amygdalus 

 Andersonii, Greene (Fl. Fr., 49), comes within the borders of 

 California, east of the Sierra Nevada, and is no rarity among 

 the rocky hills and mountains which enclose the great Colo- 

 rado Desert of the southern counties. The shrub was first 

 made known to botanists under the generic name of Prunus, 

 and hence it has been called the Desert Plum. But whoever 

 sees it in flower will recognize it at a glance as congeneric with 

 the Peach and Almond, rather than with the Plums. When 

 out of bloom it is about as inconspicuous as other desert 

 shrubs, for the foliage is both small and sparse. Its asso- 

 ciates are the smaller Agaves, Yuccas, and the bristling Opun- 

 tias and other Cacti which prevail in those verdureless and 

 almost rainless districts ; and then, rooted firmly in the scant 

 soil of crevices and fissures of sunburnt rocks, in February it 

 clothes itself with a fine display of rose-red blossoms, and so 

 becomes an ornament to a hard landscape otherwise enlivened 

 at this season only by the red and yellow of certain Cactus- 

 blossoms. The shrub is low and bushy, perhaps seldom 

 attaining'a man's height ; and to its flowers there succeed in 

 their season the small velvety drupes, scarcely more than a 

 half-inch long, which, when ripe, divest themselves of their 



