only is this seen in the occasional scoriated rock, but the nutritive elements peculiar to volcanic regions mark their presence in the vegetation. It is a question whether the frosts and snows of this high latitude have not, by what may, by way of illustration, be called the attrition of chemical forces, released certain properties of the volcanic period as a vegetable nutriment not found, or found only in limited quantities, in regions of similar formation further south. It is a well authenticated fact that frosts and snows will dissolve most earthy formations, and release properties that defy ordinary degrees of heat, but how far this effect enters as a cause into the fine growth of wheat in a character of land until recently there, and elsewhere now, regarded as comparatively unproductive, is referred to the analytical chemist. Suffice it for the emigrant that wheat grows there in paying quantities, and vegetables attain enormous size; as, for instance, a squash in the possession of Dr. Blalock, of Walla Walla, that weighs 124 pounds. In partial confirmation of this theory of the release of vegetable nutriment from the volcanic formations, is the fact that the lands of the foothills, and even on the highest accessible peaks, are far more productive than those of the valleys and along the streams, thus reversing the usual rule of agricultural value obtaining all over the world. As the external appearance of most of the wheat land of this region is much like that of the sage-brush alkali plains of Nevada and Utah, the question arises, may not, in the near future, these plains, now considered worthless, be found to grow in prodigal quantities something of prime commercial importance, and the world see again the triumph of the "stone which the builders rejected," in that the waste of to-day will become the keystone in the agricultural arch of American greatness?

However, this is not the paradise that partial rumor has painted it. The valley of the Wabash, and various sections of Iowa, Wisconsin, Kansas, Texas, and California, grow wheat as well, if not better. By late experience they have discovered that to grow wheat successfully, and maintain the strength of the soil, it is necessary to summer-fallow every other year, and by that process thirty bushels per acre can safely be counted upon. In this respect it falls far short of the durability of the valley of the Euphrates, whose cereals have been grown continuously for the last two thousand years without any appreciable diminution in the annual yield. Exceptionally fine fields of small size, under the most favorable conditions, yield as high as fifty bushels to the acre, and this, as

VOL. I.-8.

a bit of newspaper information, isolates itself from the result in less fortunate vicinages, and goes to distant parts of the country as a representative type of the general productiveness of the section. With as much truth could we herald the almost fabulous wealth of Mr. J. C. Flood, with all the environments of his life, as a representative instance of fortunes in California. Though not quite so startling in its sophistry, it still paints a truth with a faithfulness painfully realized by many who have gone there on the flood-tide of these wild and exaggerated estimates. Fortunes are being made slowly there now on wheat culture, with all the disadvantages of the isolated situation and an imperfect transportation, and when the railroad projects now contemplated are completed, and freights reduced to reasonable figures, this country will develop in wealth as rapidly as a fine agricultural country anywhere. During the winters those not prepared better than immigrants usually are, have anything but a pleasant life in that low temperature. Building material has to be brought from the mills on the Lower Columbia, beyond the Cascades, and hence is very costly; and as the Columbia is generally ice-blocked as far down as The Dalles for two months in the winter, immigrants arriving late in the season have been compelled to live the entire winter in tents pitched upon the muddy soil, and exposed to the unobstructed sweep of the winds for hundreds of miles. Many such may be found the present season in the Palouse country. On the other hand, in summer the traveler of a dozen miles will find great difficulty in ascertaining by inspection the original color or material of his clothes, while his eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth will be smarting with alkali dust. The strong summer winds take up the fine particles and drive them across the country like clouds, and any one who has felt the stinging sensation of alkali in the eyes will at once conclude this is not a paradise, whatever enthusiasts may say. The thermometer rises as high in the Walla Walla Valley in summer as in the San Joaquin. These extremes of heat and cold and high winds will be to some extent modified when any considerable growth of trees is produced. Though almost nude of them now and originally, it results from no defect in the soil or climate, as has been demonstrated by practical tests about Walla Walla, where they attain great height and breadth in a short period. Tree culture is beginning to attract considerable attention, and can not be too highly estimated. This is a country of great promise, and will one day be a rich and populous section, but he who seeks it now expecting to

Never was garden more unintentionally started, and never did one prove greater source of pleasure. One of the row of detached cottages, which my elder brother had built for the purpose of letting to tenants, was occupied during one summer by a younger brother with his family, who purposed returning to the States at the close of the following winter. The town lies in the midst of the Salinas plains, and as these cottages were pretty much on the outskirts, the surroundings were flat and dreary enough. George, however, had the foresight to plant trees-little snips of eucalyptus, about six inches high-one row along the outer edge of the sidewalk, another row inside the white paling fence.

To make the glaringly new place a little more homelike during my sister-in-law's sojourn in California, I had a dozen or two of plants sent up by a San Francisco florist, and set out in the little front yard of the cottagefuchsias, a few double geraniums, pelargonias, pansies-common enough flowers, which would entail but small loss by their death or destruction, after having served their purpose.

It so chanced, one day about Christmas time, while on a visit there with mother, that my little nephew brought me two small twigs of honeysuckle-little sprigs about four inches long, broken off a neighbor's vine at haphazard -not slips or shoots. It was a wet, rainy day, and I stuck them in the ground by the front porch, as children do when they play at making gardens. I went back to the city, mother remaining in Salinas till the time should come for my State-brother's departure for his old home; then I went up for a last visit, and was surprised when mother pointed out two nicely growing honeysuckle vines, and said they were the little sticks I had planted. By this time, as the winter was a wet one, the little eucalyptus | had more than doubled their height; the geraniums looked as if they did not intend to die, by any means, after their brief period of usefulness; and the fuchsias were covered with the merriest, gayest bells of royal purple, deep red, and starry white. Mother had, in the meantime, set out a verbena slip here, a bunch of violets there, in the little front yard, and began to cast longing glances at the much larger space in the rear of the house, which stood covered with weeds a foot or two high. I, too,

found myself often on the front porch, watching the almost visible growth of the scant collection of plants; and finally, before the day came on which we were all to leave the little cottage and my bachelor brother to their solitary fate, we had concluded not to abandon either, but to refurnish the cottage and install mother as housekeeper for brother, while I was to spend there such brief periods of my existence as I could pass without breathing the air of San Francisco.

And now we commenced growing a garden. I haunted the florists' shops and fancy nurseries in and about the city, bought and sent home all the flowers I could see or think of-had many a batch of worn-out, gnarled old plants palmed off on me as "sturdy growers,” and many a "goose" flung at my devoted head by my big brother, because I could not tell a healthy, thrifty flower from one that had been forced into temporary bloom and beauty by the gardener's art. To my unspeakable joy I was one day presented with a bundle of a hundred rose cuttings, and on carrying these to Salinas in person, my brother's interest in the garden was at last fully aroused. The ground back of the house had ceased to be a wilderness; the soil had been turned, beds laid off, and all sorts of seeds sown. On a piece of ground next our garden proper, and in the immediate vicinity of an artesian well, George laid all the rose cuttings in rows, close together, the object being to give them as much water as possible through the summer, to make roots, so that they could be transplanted in the fall. A little, rude paling fence was built around the patch, and, as it had just about the right dimensions for a grave, the neighbors' children got to calling it our graveyard. As it was still early in the year, we continued to plant, mother and I, all the slips, seeds, and flowers we could buy, beg, or borrow. I dare say the seeding and planting was not always done strictly according to rule; and my brother, who understands something of gardening, no doubt often had his patience sorely tried by the lack of system and knowledge we displayed. But what matter, so long as everything grew and thrived and flourished? Every small bit of geranium that was broken by accident was stuck in the ground and grew to be a bush. Every little twig of fuchsia, every fragment of petunia, heliotrope, pink, showed the

scream was the natural result, and when mother came and threw open the door, we beheld for the first time our toad—a tender little thing, not over an inch or two long or broad. He looked gravely into my face, surprised and displeased at the fuss I had made about it, and then demurely hopped away. After this we saw him frequently, generally seated behind the yellow jasmine on the "half round" bed, but just as often perched on the top of an old stone jug in the wood-house. But he croaked when he felt like it, and it meant neither sunshine nor rain, so far as I could discover.

About this time I visited San José, and there, at a pottery, saw a garden urn which I knew would look perfectly lovely in our garden. It stood about a yard high from the ground, could be taken in two pieces, and was to cost five dollars. I had it sent home; but, somehow, George never liked the thing, though he had it painted a bronze-green at my request. I lugged it into the front yard, underneath a eucalyptus tree, with an immediate background of pinkblooming double geranium. In it I planted a heliotrope (they grew like weeds all over the garden), surrounded by a wreath of some drooping little vines, which hung over the rim of the urn. This whole arrangement I mounted on an empty candle-box, around which I planted the periwinkle with its far-reaching arms, to hide the box and make believe it was a pedestal. Placed at the head of the broad walk or alley formed by the two houses, and viewed from the bottom of the garden, I thought the effect was charming. But my brother thought differently; and when I came to Salinas again, the box pedestal had been chopped into kindling-wood, and the urn, in two pieces, was idly rolling around the yard. The heliotrope had died, George said, and the periwinkle would not grow. I quietly gathered up the urn, dragged it to the front porch, filled it with earth, and planted a beautiful pink pelargonium in it, surrounded by a wreath of blue lobelias. I watched it and tended it, and when I left, it was under the impression that this was the prettiest piece of furniture in the whole establishment. On my return I could see neither the urn nor the plants in it, and immediately commenced a "still hunt" for both. I found the urn at last, drew it out of its hiding-place, rolled it to the front porch once more, and commenced operations. I took the largest of the Turk's-head cactus, and, as I could not handle the thing on account of the long thorns, broke the pot to pieces and managed to slide the plant into the urn. Then I carefully gathered up the fragments of the big flower-pot, put them where I had found the urn, and con

sidered a good day's work done. I had beaten my brother-the cactus was too much for him; and, as far as I know, the urn stands on the front porch to this day.

Soon after, another equally bitter but equally wordless war was waged between us. The garden was now so grown up-so choked up, in fact that many things which had been planted in the first place to make a quick growth, could be well spared. Among these, first and foremost, a vine called water-ivy by some, German ivy by others. It grows rapidly, has a pretty, glossy, dark-green leaf, and is the favorite resort of a large, hairy, black caterpillar. Partly on this account, and partly because it dies down in winter and leaves a mass of tough, black, string-like lines clinging to the trellis, I had always hated it, and wanted George to root it out, as there were so many prettier vines in the garden-English ivy, woodbine, passion vine, ivy geranium, smilax, clyanthus, and running roses. George, on the other hand, hated my beautiful sollya, because the resinous matter, which exudes from it with the sun, always caught the dust, and adhered as a black mass to the flooring of the porch. But the plant was graceful and the flower lovely, and I would not pull it up. Neither would he pull up the water-ivy. At last I commenced on this myself; but it was so tough, and so spread out and rooted in, that I made but little headway, and went to San Francisco before I could fairly finish the task. When I came back my sollya had disappeared, root and branch, and that horrid water-ivy was still in its place. The porch was so thickly covered with vines now that the sollya was really not missed; but I had to get even with my flint-headed brother. After much labor, I succeeded in dragging the objectionable ivy out of the ground, threw the whole thing over the fence, and took my departure for the city, well satisfied with my efforts at ridding the garden of a nuisance. Returning within a week or two, behold!--the waterivy, replanted in its old corner. Without a word I dug it up, and threw it over the fence on the other side, and felt quite triumphant when its former place was vacant on my next visit. Months later, I chanced into the vacant lot below, which had been set out with roses and evergreens, when what should I see but that detestable water-ivy, growing as if nothing had happened it, in a far corner of the lot. I ran back to the house, found a hatchet, pulled up the plant, hacked it into little pieces, and threw it, by bits, into the street. That was the last of the water-ivy.

Amid these "wars, and rumors of wars," fair June had come once more-two years and six