PARK AND CEMETERY, 
1 68 
rose or purple flowers are by no means all evening 
primroses — “hermit like, shunning the light, wast- 
ing their blooms on the night.” Many keep open 
all day, especially in shade. 
Eucharidium, in two species and a variety or 
two, are pretty garden annuals, with purplish 
flowers. Where they do well they are worth at- 
tention. 
Fuchsia has fifty species, mostly South Ameri- 
can and Central American, but with two or three 
species in New Zealand. The little creeping F. 
procumbens is one of these latter, and should be 
tried as a rockwork plant at the south. Of the 
South American kinds F. Riccartoni, a garden va- 
variety , is deemed the hardiest kind, and endures the 
winters in Scot- 
land, but gener- 
ally as a herba- 
ceous plant. F. 
globosa is grown 
in the same way; 
so also is F. ma- 
crostemma (better 
known as cocci- 
nea). In the south- 
western counties 
of England and in 
some parts of Cal- 
ifornia the garden 
varieties and sev- 
eral good species 
do well and form 
handsome large 
plants. On the 
mountains of India, too, and in parts of Australia, 
Fuchsias grow to perfection, forming bushes which 
are marvels of beauty. In the Atlantic States they 
are forbidden fruit, except as greenhouse plants, and 
here and there as bedders under north walls during 
summer. One or two florists have, I believe, tried 
to winter the hardy kinds outdoors. On the south- 
ern mountains they may succeed if cut down and 
covered about Christmas with a pile of pine needles 
or sawdust. 
Lopezia has fifteen Mexican and Central Ameri- 
can shrubs and herbs, some of them rather pretty, 
but hardy only in climates such as California. 
Gaura has twenty North American species. G. 
Lindheimeri, a Texas plant, is the only one much 
seen in cultivation. It has spikes of pink and white 
flowers. 
Trapa is a genus of floating aquatics in two or 
three species, common to Southern Europe, Africa 
and Asia. They yield eatable nuts, and T. bispi- 
nosa is, I think, hardy at Washington, D. C. The 
natives of the northwest provinces of India use this 
species for food, and Dr. Royle has somewhere re- 
corded that a Rajah of Cashmere lev : ed taxes to the 
tune of $60,000 annually on the 120,000 assloads 
passing through his famous valley. 
The plants are singular, and their seed vessels 
more so, the species named above having two 
spines or horns projecting from the seed vessel, 
which looks for all the world like the model of a 
Bison’s skull. 
Trenton, N. J. James MacPhcrson. 
Among the plants which grow spontaneously on the 
surface of the moors of Portugal, of Spain, of Sicily, and 
in all the north of Africa, there is found a long-lived 
graminae, the products of which, scarcely known in 
France, except perhaps in the south, are on the* con- 
trary, greatly appreciated in other countries. In Spain 
they give it the name of Spanish grass, but it is more 
frequently designated by that of halfa, from the Arabian 
term. Not only is the leaf of this plant transformed, by 
processes comparatively simple, into a paste for paper 
of superior quality, but it is also employed in a number 
of uses, either in domestic economy or in navigation. 
There are made from it cordage, nets, artificial horsehair, 
sacks, mats, or rush matting, objects of the basket trade, 
and even stuffs and tapestries for rooms. In consider- 
ing it alone from the point of view of the production of 
paper, this textile plant can be the source of consider- 
able profit for those who undertake its cultivation. 
Rags becoming more and more rare, the use of this 
paste for paper becomes more extended every day. In 
a financial statement made not long ago in the House of 
Commons in England, Gladstone spoke of it as follows: 
“No one can form an idea of the multiple usages to 
which this paste lends itself. It is, so to say, under all 
forms possible. With it anatomists make artificial 
limbs; other artisans use it to make telescopes; it is 
employed in making dolls and combs.” At the univer- 
sal exposition in 1878 there were seen door panels in 
paper of halfa, and even carriage wheels. Who, then, 
can place limits to the industry of this plant, when we 
see India rubber, so supple and variable by nature, be- 
come after several preparations harder than wood? On 
the high plateaus of Algeria, and in Sicily and Tunis, 
halfa is being cultivated after fixed methods. Two an 1 
a half acres produce a ton of leaves, which are sold for 
$22 at the port of embarkment. In botany halfa is 
known by the name of lignseum spartum . — Emily Wind- 
sor in Chicago Inter Ocean. 
* * * 
A London paper claims that teak is the most desir- 
able wood known for structural and mechanical pur- 
poses. It is hard, yet light, easily worked, and though 
porous, strong and lasting. It is soon seasoned, shrinks 
little, and because of its oily nature does not injure iron. 
In southeastern Asia it is much used for shipbuilding. 
The wood is frequently girdled a year before it is felled, 
and thus exposed to sun and wind it seasons more rap- 
idly than when cut- green. 
