THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
13 
wide open, and fully three inches in diameter. Of course, 
we could not be content with one visit and so one moon- 
light night we wandered down to the little meadow again. 
It seemed like fairyland. Thousands of these evening prim- 
roses were swaying in the breeze, many of the stalks as 
tall as our heads. Almost, w^e felt we w^ere home once more, 
but, alas, our eyes wandered to the surrounding hills. They, 
at least, were truly Califomian, showing clearly the sage 
brush and dried yucca stalks, w^hich in the moonlight seemed 
like an army of giant ghosts. To the traveler far from 
home it was a heartsome spot, and we could not see the 
strange flowers so happy were we with the familiar ones. 
Southern California, it is true, is a garden of flowers after 
the rainy season, but to the "Easterner" they are all strange 
and new, and one has to get acquainted before he can feel 
at home. So this little mountain meadow, filled with the 
flowers we had not seen for many moons, gave us more pleas- 
ure than the thousands of new strange flowers we had stud - 
ied and puzzled over in our adopted state. 
Riverside, California. 
'EA. or an infusion of it, is an aromatic drink, more or 
less astring-ent and stimulant. It aids the digestion 
and quickens the circulation by acting on the nervous system 
and the intellectual faculties. Now other plants have exact- 
ly the same qualities as the Chinese tea. but the>' have the 
great fault of being much cheaper. Everj- infusion of a 
plant that has the same properties as tea will have the same 
effects; thus the word "tea" has come to signify, in a 
general way, "digestive beverage," and we shall see that 
several plants may replace the real tea. One of them has 
SUBSTITUTES FOR TEA, 
