Birds and all Nature, Vol. V, No. 5, May 1899

Trees afford hiding and nesting places for many birds and animals. Their cooling shelter comforts the cattle; they furnish coursing-places among their branches for the sportive climbing-animals, and their tender twigs give restful delight to the little birds far out of reach of any foe.

Man has always used the trees for house building; his warmth is largely supplied from fires of wood and leaves; from the days when Adam and Eve did their first tailoring with fig leaves, the trees have been levied upon for articles of clothing till now the world is supplied with hats of wood, millions of buttons of the same material are worn, and the wooden shoes of the peasantry of Europe clump gratefully over the ground in acknowledgment of the debt of mankind to the woods.

Weapons of all sorts, in all ages, have been largely of wood. Houses, furniture, troughs, spoons, bowls, plows, and all sorts of implements for making a living have been fashioned by man from timber. Every sort of carriage man ever devised, whether for land or water travel, depended in its origin upon the willing material the trees have offered. Although we now have learned to plow the seas with prow of steel and ride the horseless carriage that has little or no wood about it, yet the very perfection of these has arisen from the employment of wood in countless experiments before the metal thing was invented.

Our daily paper is printed from the successors of Gutenberg's wooden type, upon what seems to be paper, but is in reality the ground-up and whitened pulp of our forest trees. Our food is largely of nuts and fruits presented us by the trees of all climes, which are yet brought to our doors in many instances by wooden sailing-vessels, whose sails are spread on spars from our northern forests.

The baskets of the white man and the red Indian are made from the materials of the forest. Ash strips are pounded skillfully and readily separate themselves in flat strips suitable for weaving into receptacles for carrying the berries of the forest shades or the products of the soil, whose richness came by reason of the long-standing forests which stood above it and fell into it for centuries.

Whoever has tried to stopper a bottle when no cork was at hand knows something of the value of one sort of trees. He who has lain upon a bed of fever without access to quinine knows more of the debt we owe the generous forests that invite us with their cooling branches and their carpeted, mossy floors. The uses of rubber to city people are almost enough to induce one to remove his hat in reverence to the rubber tree; the esteem we have for the products of the sugar maple and the various products of the pine in their common forms of tar, pitch, and turpentine, as well as in their subtler forms, which are so essential to the arts and sciences, contributing to our ease, comfort, and elegance, should cause us to cherish the lofty pine and the giant maple with warmest gratitude.

Perhaps the most refined of the pleasures of man is found in the playing of musical instruments. There is not one of the sweeter-toned of all the vast family of musical instruments that is not dependent on the sympathetic qualities of the various woods. The violin shows the soul of this material in its highest refinement. No other instrument has so effectually caught the tones of the glorious mountain and the peaceful valley as has the choicely selected and deftly fashioned shell of the fiddle. It awakens all the fancies of a lifetime in one short hour, it brings gladness to the heart and enlivens the whole frame, and when the master hand brings out from its delicate form the deeper secrets of its nature the violin brings tears to our eyes and inspires within us an earnestness of purpose which is a perpetual tribute of the soul of man to the heart of the forest.

I took a spring journey once from the heart of old Kentucky through some of the northern states around to the eastward to Virginia. The dogwood was in blossom south of the Ohio. The forests and hillsides were set forth here and there in bridal array by the glad whiteness of myriads of these delicate flowers. Through Ohio and Indiana the peach trees were putting forth their delicate pink blossoms that sought us out in the cars and delighted us with their rare fragrance. In Pennsylvania we passed out of the peach region, and I thought the mountains could not give flowers to match the loveliness experienced on the two preceding days, but when we were running adown the "blue Juniata river" there burst upon me the purple radiance of the ironwood that I had entirely forgotten as a flowering tree of beauty. Brighter than the peach and softer than the dogwood it stood out against the foliage of the stream and hillside. It followed the railway all down the Susquehanna across the line into Maryland, and gave me joy until it was lost again as the warmth of the southern sun poured itself again before my eyes upon the purity and simplicity of the snowy dogwood.

And in the fall I once passed through the hills of New York and Massachusetts. It was Thanksgiving Day. The matchless American forests were then in their greatest glory. Every hill seemed to have brought out its choicest holiday garment and was calling for admiration. So richly blended are the reds, the yellows, and the greens that one cannot see how people can do business with such delights for the eye spread out before them. Why they do not come en masse and join in this holiday of the trees is more than I can understand. It seems as if the Creator of heaven and earth had reserved for the home of liberty the most gorgeous colorings that prismatic light is susceptible of bearing, and thrown them all down in luxurious profusion for the delectation of the people who should shake off the man-serving spirit and come here to breathe the air of freedom and rejoice with nature through the ten days of her gorgeous Thanksgiving time.

THE CINERARIA

PROF. WILLIAM K. HIGLEY,

Secretary Chicago Academy of Sciences

IN THE early days of the Columbian Exposition, before people had ceased to wonder at the unexpected and unusual sights, there were beautiful displays of plants in flower, on a scale never before attempted, at least in this part of the world.

Those wise enough to respond to the invitation to visit the long, low green houses in Jackson Park, before the more pretentious Horticultural Building was ready for use, will never forget the royal mass of blossoms which greeted their eyes as they passed through long aisles of bloom.

The announcement that the cineraria was on exhibition meant little to many, but to those who found their way to the park during the chilly spring days and patiently trudged over unfinished paths, and through rubbish and incompleteness, the announcement opened the door to a sight so wonderfully fine and complete, so astonishing, and so delightful, that to look was to exclaim and admire, and to admire was to remember, and, months after, to long for another sight of that billowy mass of pinky-purplish bloom.

The Compositæ, the family of plants to which the cinerarias belong, contains about seven hundred and sixty genera and over ten thousand species, embracing approximately one-tenth of all the flowering forms. This is the largest family of plants and includes the goldenrod, the sunflower, the aster, the chrysanthemum, the thistle, the lettuce, the dandelion, and many others. The species are widely distributed, though more common in temperate or hot regions, the largest number being found in the Americas.

Though a family of herbs, there are a few shrubs and in the tropics a small number of trees. The cultivated forms are numerous, and some are among our most beautiful fall plants.

The flowers are collected together in heads, and sometimes are of two kinds (composite). Using the sunflower for an example we find a disk of tubular flowers in the center and, growing around it, a row of strap-shaped flowers, while in the dandelion they are all strap-shaped, and in some other species all are tubular.

The cineraria is an excellent illustration of the composite form, which bears both kinds of flowers.

The name cineraria (Latin, cinerarius, from cinis, ashes) was given to these plants because of the grayish down that covers the surface of the leaves.

The cinerarias form a large genus of practically herbaceous plants, and are chiefly natives of southern Africa and southern and eastern Europe. The varieties vary greatly from white to pinkish-purple and through various shades to dark, bluish-purple.

They are quite easily cultivated, but are house plants in temperate latitudes. They are peculiarly liable to attacks of insects, plant-lice (Aphides) being especially an enemy.

The florist's varieties are chiefly produced from the species Cineraria cruenta. Beautiful hybrids have been developed from this and other species, and the flower certainly deserves the popularity it has attained through sterling merit.