Have you noticed a trunk of a hickory or chestnut tree which has been sawn straight across? There is a distinct centre, with rings of wood around it, growing larger and larger, all covered by bark. On such trees the outside ring of wood forms new every year, and if you can count the rings you can tell how old the tree is. When the tree is cut lengthwise into boards, these rings make beautiful grainings. A palm-tree has no apparent centre, no rings of wood, and no real bark. It is a very different kind of tree from the chestnut. There is wood, of course, in the palm trunk, else it would not be stiff enough to stand up so straight and tall. But the wood is in threads, long and slender, scattered without order through the trunk. The dots in the end of my fan-handle are the tips of threads of wood. If you were to see a palm sawn across you would find hundreds of similar dots. You cannot tell how old the palm is. The cut end of a cornstalk will show the same kind of structure, woody dots in soft juicy tissue. Grasses grow in the same way, and so do orchids, lilies, hyacinths, daffodils, iris, flag-root, cat's-tails, and many of our pretty spring wild flowers—-the yellow dog-toothed violet, lily-of-the-valley, Solomon's-seal, etc. Our grains—corn, wheat, oats, rye—are humble but useful members of this same grand division of Endogens. All other trees and herbs which have bark, wood, and pith, and which when long lived increase by additional rings of wood under the bark, are Exogens.
Next examine the spread-out part of our fan. Ridges start from a common centre, where the stem joins the blade, and radiate towards the circumference. These ridges are the paths for the veins, and all leaves whose veins run side by side are called parallel-veined leaves. A plantain leaf shows this plainly. A chestnut leaf has an arrangement of veins like a feather. There is a central midrib, from which veins spring, running across the leaf, joined irregularly with intertwining veinlets. These leaves are net-veined, and grow on exogens. The parallel-veined leaves of endogens often clasp and surround the stem, the upper leaf growing from within the lower. Even the seed of endogens grows differently from that of exogens. A grain of corn sends up one first leaf; so do lilies and grains. A squash seed sends up two first leaves. The first leaves of a seed are cotyledons, and the one-leafed seed is monocotyledonous, while two-leafed seeds are dicotyledonous.
Banana-trees are endogens, and produce such abundant fruit in their native soil that ground which planted in wheat would support two persons, if planted with bananas would nourish fifty. If you were cast away on a desert island you would fare better if the trees above you were endogens than if they were exogens. A grove of bananas and a cocoanut palm would support you better than chestnuts, hickories, oaks, and maples.
[JENSEN FALLS OVERBOARD.]
BY OSCAR KING DAVIS.
he United States Revenue-cutter Corwin was taking the court officials from Sitka to Juneau to hold court. There was to be a term to deal with the seizures of seal-poachers that had been made by the patrol fleet in the Bering Sea that summer. They were in a hurry, and the Corwin was doing her best. It was perhaps 4 o'clock in the afternoon of a dismal dull November day that the revenue-cutter rounded a point in Chatham Straits, and came plump upon a sleek little Columbia River fishing-sloop beating down the channel. Something in her trim suggested smugglers to the officer of the deck. The Captain was below with some of the court officials when the messenger from the Lieutenant reported. When he got on deck a quartermaster was already standing by the flag halyards, ready to send aloft the signal to the sloop to stop, and a boat's crew stood ready to clear away the dingy. The Captain took in the situation at a glance, and almost with one breath ordered the signal flown and the boat cleared away. The men in the little sloop had been watching with eyes of experience, and as the signal-flags fluttered from her spanker-gaff they swung their boat up into the wind and dropped the jib.
On the cutter the men were lowering the dingy, and the Lieutenant stood by the rail ready to go the moment his boat caught the water. Three sailor-men were in the boat, two at the fall-ropes and one in the middle with the oars and cushions. Jensen, the man at the after fall-rope, was a fine big Swede, broad-shouldered and stalwart. A drizzling rain was driving down from the mountains that line the Straits, and all the men were in their oil-skins and sou'westers. Jensen had added a great pair of rubber boots with long tops that reached up to his hips. The fall-ropes had begun to slip through the sheaves, and the dingy had started toward the water, when the eye-bolt at the stern, to which the lower block of the fall-rope was hooked, broke with a snap like a pistol crack. Instantly the stern of the boat fell into the water, but quickly as it fell the sailor-men were quicker. As they heard the snap of the breaking bolt and felt the boat begin to go out from under their feet, all three threw up their hands and grasped the wire stay that stretches between the davits. Two caught it with both hands, but Jensen missed with his right. The lurch with which the dingy fell had given him a twisting motion, and as he clung to the stay with his left hand he swung around until his arm could be twisted no further, and then he let go.