, also. You
have seen the palms, the tall sword-palm with its great spike of snowy
bloom in the spring, the fan-palm whose dried and trimmed leaves
are really used for fans, and, perhaps, the date-palm. This tree
was planted round the Missions by the Padres, and some, more than
a hundred years old, are still standing at the San Gabriel Mission.
These, and the magnolia with its large creamy blossoms, as well as the
graceful pepper-tree, are natives of warm, southern lands, while the
eucalyptus, or gum-tree, was brought here from Australia.

Look round, children, as you walk to and from school, or in the park,
and try to know and name the green things growing there, the flowers
and plants sent to make our world a pleasant place to live in.

THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING

The largest trees in the world are those forest giants of California
which grow on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, and nowhere
else on the globe. People carelessly call these grand trees "redwoods"
or "big trees," but their family name is Sequoia, an Indian chief's
name. When the trees were first discovered, in 1853, accounts of their
height and size were sent to England. Supposing this giant to be a new
tree, it was there christened _Wellingtonia_, and also _gigantea_
for its immense measurements. While Americans were trying to have it
called _Washingtonia_, a famous Frenchman who knew all about trees
decided that the specimen sent him was certainly a sequoia, as named
by a German professor some six years before this time. So the tree was
called _sequoia gigantea_ and quietly went on growing, unmindful of
the four nations who had quarrelled over its christening. Why, indeed,
should it bother its lofty head with the chatter of people whose
countries were unknown when this mighty tree was full grown? For
these sequoias are the oldest of living objects and have probably been
growing for four thousand years. How do we know this? Well, when a
fallen trunk is sawed across, one can see rings in the wood, and it is
thought that each ring is a year's growth. John Muir counted over four
thousand of these annual rings on the stump of one of the Kings River
trees.

These fine old trees grow in groves, and of the nine or ten groves
the Calaveras and Mariposa are the best known. The Calaveras group of
nearly a hundred mighty trees was the first one discovered, and four
trees here are over three hundred feet high. The fallen "Father of
the Forest"