[MANZANITA—Arctostaphylos manzanita.]

The largest manzanita known is upon the estate of Mr. Tiburcio Parrott, in St. Helena, Napa County, California. It is thirty-five feet high, with a spread of branches equal to its height, while its trunk measures eleven and a half feet in circumference at the ground, soon dividing into large branches. It is a veritable patriarch, and has doubtless seen many centuries. According to an interesting account in "Garden and Forest," it once had a narrow escape from the ax of a woodman. A gentleman who was a lover of trees, happening to pass, paid the woodman two dollars to spare its life.

Years ago no traveler from the East felt that he could return home without a manzanita cane, made from as straight a branch as could be secured.

The berries of this shrub are dry and bony and quite unsatisfactory. They are, however, pleasantly acid, and have been put to several uses. It is said that both brandy and vinegar are made from them, and housewives make quite a good jelly from some species. Bears are fond of the berries, and the Indians eat them, both raw and pounded into a flour, from which mush is made. The leaves made into a tincture or infusion are now an officinal drug, valued in catarrh of the throat or stomach.

From Monterey to San Diego is found A. glauca, Lindl., the great-berried manzanita. It closely resembles the above, but its berries are three fourths of an inch in diameter.

Of the same range as the last is A. bicolor, Gray, whose leaves are of a rich, shining green above and white and woolly beneath. Its berries are the size of a pea, yellowish at first, and turning red later.

CALIFORNIAN SAXIFRAGE.

Saxifraga Californica, Greene. Saxifrage Family.

Leaves.—Few; all radical; oval; one to two inches long, on broad petioles six to twelve lines long. Scape.—Six to eighteen inches high. Flowers.—White or rose; four or five lines across. Calyx.—Deeply five-cleft, with reflexed lobes. Petals.—Borne on the calyx. Stamens.—Ten. Ovaries.—Two; partly united. Styles short. Stigmas capitate. Syn.—S. Virginiensis, Michx. Hab.—Throughout the State.