BUTTON-BUSH TREE — RIVER BALL-FLOWER TREE. 91 



more cylindroid, i. e. % relatively narrower girth, sharper, or 

 not so abruptly pointed, and covered with weak hairs; ours, 

 absolutely smooth; the tree also is more angular, besides the 

 hark of the northern tree is not so very white, is more even, 

 though never smooth. As a general rule, the younger and 

 more thrifty timber hears the best reputation ; used tor wagon 

 purposes and other rural requisites. 



Although the actual Philemons, hamadryads, and, indeed, 

 the oracular oaks themselves are gone, and no nightly torch- 

 pomp, nor Druid priest lead the way to the Mistletoe, {PJio- 

 radendron flavescens) yet we do well still to heed it, for where 

 it marshals its hosts on the trees, the fen-sucked fogs are 

 stayed, boldly marking the limit of malarial lines, and chill- 

 ing damps of nightly gloom, with their untimely frosts; this 

 invisible dragon of the abyss often wends his way farther up 

 the ravine, often abroad on the contiguous plain, but the 

 sacred sanitary sentinel hath its brazen tent pitched high 

 aloft in the trees, and he dare not pass; but it gives place to 

 the pure and more genial airs above. Under similar condi- 

 tions, in like localities, the mistletoe also greatly abounds on 

 the Blue Douglas Oak as well as upon this Garryan Pacific 

 Post Oak. 



It extends from San Francisco Bay north to Vancouver's 

 Island, mainly on the sea coast, but occasionally passes 

 around above the head waters of the Sacramento River to 

 the Sierras. 



BUTTON-BUSH TREE— RIVER BALL-FLOWER TREE. 



(Cephalanthus occiclentalis.) 



A BEAUTIFUL symmetrical well balanced tree, forty 

 /A feet or more in height, by one to two feet in diameter, 

 along such rivers as the San Joaquin, or such lesser 

 streams as those of Lake County; the best types with a 

 straight body fifteen feet or so, the upper third crowned by a 

 handsome rounded or semi-rounded head, probably some 

 few of these exceed forty feet in height, by a foot and a half 

 in diameter.* The Button-bush, along slow creeks, margins 



* These proportions, we are well aware, will strike with some surprise those 

 familiar with the Button-Bush as a small shrub elsewhere, for which reason, a 

 word of general remark becomes necessary. Even the scientific visitor is too prone 

 to consider such extremes as distinct species or varieties, being quite unaccustomed 

 to this wide range of development. We might cite numerous familiar examples — 

 might almost say rules — among the oak, chestnut, cypress, spruce, pine, and bay, 

 etc., besides bushes, herbs, and so on. It is not easily reconcilable with our pre- 



