practically earlier, larger and more vigorous than Spanish Irises. 
Tmgitmia, one of their parents, is a beautiful pale-blue which 
flowers as early as March. The related English Irises need 
more natural moisture than the above and have never thrived 
in my dry gardens. 
Siberian and Japanese Irises are not naturally adapted to 
our dry summers, but if given copious summer soakings they 
will do well. If not planted near water they should have a good 
thick mulch of rotted manure to conserve the moisture given 
them. As the Japanese Irises bloom in summer when our sun is 
sometimes scorching, they are best planted where they will have 
some afternoon shade. 
Sidney B. Mitchell, 
Garden Hints from the Redwoods 
Last spring the writer visited the giant Redwoods of 
Humboldt County, California, in order to inspect the areas 
which it is proposed to secure by purchase or gift for the 
establishment of a National Eedwood Park, 
There is a strange air of other days about these Redwoods 
which is confirmed by what we now know of their past history; 
for the Sequoia sempervirens as well as the Sequoia gigantea are 
survivors of a genus that once had many species and flourished 
over the greater part of the northern hemisphere. They 
extended in a wide belt from Greenland across Canada, 
Alaska, Siberia and Europe. Their petrified cones are found 
in strata under the lava^ of Mount Shasta and may have 
lived millions of years before its snowy crest was thrust into 
the sky. The imprints of the leaves and cones of the Sequoia's 
ancestors are found in strata that were laid down before the 
Sierra Nevada's were uplifted during the Jurassic period of the 
earth's history. It is a distinct jolt to one's imagination to find 
that mountains which the mind of man has adopted as symbols 
of permanence are but recent arrivals compared with the 
antiquity of the Sequoia family. 
Walking about under the mighty monarchs, I looked aloft 
along the tapering brown boles of the trees, spiring heaven- 
ward, and felt as ants must feel when they follow their tiny 
trails among plant stems towering a thousand times their height 
above them. The Irishman who claimed it took at least three 
able-bodied men to look to the top of a full-grown Sequoia 
began to seem more rational than facetious. At least it gave 
a new fillip of interest to the emotions which these trees arouse 
in the beholder. 
In any case, as we sauntered through these living 
colonnades, imagination busied itself with the inconceivably 
long stretches of time through which the Redwoods have kept 
92 
