DEODAR CONING IN ENGLAND.

Reverting to this subject, we may note that the earliest record we can find of the Deodar coning in Europe is of one that fruited in 1852, at Mr. Kell Barclay's, at Bury Hill, near Dorking, as recorded in our columns, September 11, 1852, p. 582. The tree was at that time 28 feet high. We should be glad to know its further history. Since then it has fruited at Dropmore, Kew, Sunninghill, and other places. Sir Joseph Hooker kindly reminds us that at Kew there is a specimen tree which was a seedling raised by the late Sir Thomas Acland from a cone produced at Killerton, near Exeter. The tree is more vigorous than many of the Deodars grown at Kew, the species not thriving well in the Royal Gardens. Writing from Bicton in our columns in December 11, 1869, Mr. James Barnes, says :- "I have not yet seen a tree above fifty years old or more than 80 feet high, though I 'have known it to produce cones for years; and have seen per'fect seed produced from home-grown plants, as well as plants raised from home-grown seed."-Gardener's Chronicle.

TASMANIAN TIMBERS.

Among the important trees of Tasmania is the "blue gum which has its home principally in the southern parts of Tasmania. Many of these trees exceed a height of 280 ft., with a girth of from 40 to 50 ft. The timber of the blue gum is of rather a pale colour hard, heavy, strong, and durable. In transverse strain its strength is about equal to English oak. It is used in house and shipbuilding, and also by carriage builders and manufacturers of tools. The timber of the peppermint tree is useful for many kinds of carpenters' work; in drying it does not split. It is also used in shipbuilding. The stringy bark gum "is a valuable tree, found in abundance in Tasmania. The wood supplies a large portion of the ordinary sawn hard timber for rough building purposes. It is also well adapted for carriage, cart, and wagonbuilding, wheelwork, and agricultural machinery, as well as for the framing of railway carriages and trucks. The timber of the "white gum or manna tree," is used for shingles, rails, and rough building materials. The "iron bark" is a valuable tree, the trunk of which is sawn into good timber, it is also used for posts and rails. One of the most handsome of the native trees is theblackwood," which is widely distributed along the slopes of the north-west coast. The timber is of a brownish colour, closely striped with streaks of various shades of a reddish brown. The more ornamented logs of this wood are exceedingly beautiful, and fetch a high price. The myrtle or beech is common_in Tasmania, and forms a large proportion of the forests. The "huon" pine is said to be the grandest and most useful of all the

soft woods. It is abundant along the rivers of the south-western parts of the island, attaining a height of from 60 to 120 ft., with a diameter from 3 to 8 ft. It is largely employed, locally, for all kinds of furniture and ornamental work, and is the most highlyesteemed of all kinds of wood for the lighter sea craft. The value of Tasmanian bark and timber exported during the last five years amounted £627,361, or an average of about £125,472 a year. This, says the Journal of the Society of Arts, represents nearly one-eleventh of the total exports.-Timber Trades Journal.

AN INTERESTING FOSSIL.

The other morning the navvies working at the deep cutting of the Crieff and Comrie Railway, at the west side of the town, came upon a curious heavy stone lying about 8 ft. below the surface of the ground. On examination, it seemed to have been a root-cutting of a tree nearly a foot in length, having a diameter at the lower end of 7 in., and at the top of 5 in. The lower-end appears as if cut with an axe or some such instrument, and the top has every appearance of being cut with a saw, and is quite smooth. The various yearly growths are distinctly visible at the smooth end. An experienced wood merchant is of opinion that it is the cutting of a laburnum tree. It is much heavier than a stone of the same size would be.-Ibid.

THE MANNER OF MANNA.

In an Occasional Note which we published on the 17th instant it was remarked that "the manna which fell from the sky during a shower near Merdui and Diarbekir, in Asia Minor, last August, and was baked into bread, has been examined by French men of science. It is in the form of little balls or hailstones, yellow outside and white within, and is identified as a lichen belonging to the species Lecanora esculenta. The lichen is found in Algeria, but is common on the arid mountains of Tartary and the Kirghiz Desert." A correspondent who read the note has kindly sent us some manna for inspection. In doing so he writes :Perhaps you would like to see some of it? So I enclose a small quantity. As to manna it does occasionally fall in the form of snow in the vicinity of Mardin, as I have repeatedly been assured by competent and trustworthy witnesses. I also tested it; but it is totally different from the recent fall in colour, form and taste. The former assimilates what we would realise the scriptural manna to have been like." The sample resembles Plaster of Paris, the shape and colour being the same as described in the note above. Curiously enough, the same post brought us a recently published brochure on the chemical properties of mannas from

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the pen of Mr. David Hooper, F. C. S., the Madras Government Quinologist. It is written in scientific phraselogy, and though it affords a deal of information on this interesting subject from the chemist's point of view, it does not condescend to go into those details which the "general reader" is in need of.

It is as well to disabuse one's mind at once of the idea that there is anything miraculous about manna. Doubtless the passage in the Old Testament, describing how this "angels' food" was rained down from heaven to keep from starvation the wandering Israelites, pre-supposes the idea that a miracle was performed thereby; but the miracle, if any, was with respect to the quantity of food provided rather than to the substance of the food itself. Mannas (for there are several varieties) are simply concrete exud ations from plants and trees and they are found more conspicuously in the following species:-Ash, cotoneaster, tamarisk, camelthorn, eucalyptus, oak, plantain, willow, cedar, larch and pine. The manna of the Israelites, according to some authorities, was obtained from the tamarisk shrub, according to others from the camelthorn. It may well have been obtained from both. Tamarisk manna is called by the Persians guz-angubin or tamarisk honey. It exudes during the day time in the hot months of June and July, from the slender branches of the plant, in the form of honey-like drops which in the cool of the morning are found in a solid state. Ehrenberg discovered that the exudation of this manna is caused by insects of the genus Coccus which sometimes cover the branches. At the present day it is eaten by the Arabs and by the monks of Mount Sinai like honey with their bread. The camelthorn (or alhagi) manna is called by the Persians tar-angubin. The plant from which it exudes is small, and leguminous, growing commonly enough in Persia, Afghanistan and Beluchistan. The manna occurs in the form of small, roundish, hard, dry tears varying in size from a mustard seed to that of a coriander, of light brown colour, sweet taste and senna-like odour. It is collected near Candahar and Herat and imported into India from Cabul and Candahar to the extent of about 2,000 lbs. annually, and is valued at about thirty shillings a pound. Though each of these two kinds of manna has claims to be considered identical with the manna of the Israelites, we cannot help thinking that at least one other kind has equal claims. This is the manua lichen mentioned above, which is found in more or less abundance in every desert place between Algiers and Tartary. The Lecanora esculenta is a plant that trails along the ground in layers of three to six inches thick over large tracts of country, and the position of its manna on the ground tallies with that mentioned in the Bible narrative.

The manna best known in Indian Bazaars is "Shirkhist," derived from the Cotoneaster nummularia and chiefly imported, we believe, from Afghanistan and Turkestan. It is curious that its chemistry had not been correctly ascertained until the year

before last, when M. Raby examined an authentic specimen from Persia. The author of Makhzan-el-Adwiya, speaking of shirkhist, says "they say that in the town of the Subbah of Behar and Patna and Bhagalpore; a substance like shirkhist is obtained from a plant called in Hindi, katra, and they prepare it in this manner. The tree is cut down and fire applied to the roots, which causes a flow of boiling juice which concretes into lumps like white Bugar sweetmeats, and this sugar has all the properties of shirkist, and it is called by the people of those parts "harlalu." Of another kind of manna, Mr. Hooper writes as follows:-" The pines and the cedars in the Himalayas have this year been thickly covered with manna, and Dr. G. Watt last February supplied some of the young branches of Pinus excelsa coated with a white saccharine exudation matting together the acicular leaves. The manna was whitish, opaque, soft and clammy to the touch before it was dried, odourless and sweet." There is no necessity to describe in detail the numerous other kinds of mannas. Amongst them may be mentioned the commercial manna from the frassinetti, or plantations of Sicily, which is useful for its medicinal properties; Ispahani manna derived from the Astragalus florulentus; oak manna derived from the twigs of the Quercus persica, which is an object of some industry among the tribes of Kurdistan at the present day; Laristan manna which oozes from the Pyrus glabra ; Australian eucalyptus manna, which is such a favorite sweetmeat with the children of that country; and the manna de Briançon or Birgantina, collected from the larches grown on the French Alps. (Indian Agriculturist.)

NATIONAL SCHOOL OF FORESTRY.

AT the recent annual meeting of the Association of Chambersof Commerce Mr. G. T. Harper, J. P. (Southampton), moved :To confirm the resolutions passed at previous meetings of the Association of Chambers of Commerce, that it is desirable that a School of Forestry should be established for the United Kingdom, and again represent to the Right Hon. the President of the Board of Agriculture the desirability of such an establishment." He said that England was the only great civilised country in the world that had no School of Forestry. In Germany, Natureaided by Science and Art had produced the greatest possible effect for sterile land; and in France, a sterile desert-inhabited only by shepherds, and almost uninhabitable by them-had been rendered productive, and its character completely changed. The South of Scotland delegates had asked for a Royal Commission in favour of the Forth Canal. He did not ask for a Royal Commission, because a series of Royal Commissions had already sat. The last commenced its labours in 1385, sat again in 1886, and terminated its labours in 1887. He had hoped Sir John Lubbock, who presided over that Commission, would have been

there to second the resolution, as he had done on a previous occasion. The amount of our imports of timber and the products of timber made this question very important. Seeing the enormous amount of timber and its products imported by Great Britain; that her colonies were importing largely also; that Australia was importing from the Baltic, and Canada was actually buying timbers also, was it not time that they considered the possibility of a failure, or at least a dropping off, in our supplies of timber? In the McKinley tariff which had lately been passed by the American Senate, placing an iron wall of tariffs around the States, one article was significantly relieved of duty, namely, Canadian timber, showing that even they recognis ed the necessity of securing supplies from all quarters, and as cheaply as possible. The probability of a failure of our supplies had been dealt with by very eminent men, and there was a general concensus of opinion that that supply would be very much diminished. Were we in Great Britain in a position to meet that deficiency in any way? He had before him a lecture delivered by Professor Schlich, who was one of the greatest authorities on forestry, having served twenty years in India. Professor Schlich said: "I have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that the United Kingdom has an area of waste land amounting to over 26,000,000 acres, and that less than one-fourth of it could produce all the ordinary timber, valued at £12,000,000, which is now imported." The highest authority on the New Forest-namely, the Hon. Gerald Lascelles, who was deputy-surveyor-said:" There are to be seen by the student of forestry overy 40,000 acres of waste land lying idle and worthless. He will see several fine plantations of oak, which are not only ripe and mature, but which are going back rapidly, and he will wonder why the crop is not realised. Worst of all, he will see some 45,000 acres of the most beautiful old woods in the country, most of which are dying back and speedily going to wreck and ruin. All that is required to preserve them for future generations is by simply protecting by enclosing them, and, removing dead trees, leave it to Nature to perpetuate them." Before the last Commission was held, the Government sent an invitation to eminent gentlemen both in France and Germany to come over here and report upon the state of the woods and forests of the country; and M. Boppe, inspector of French forests, having been asked whether a Schocl of Forestry was essential in Great Britain, said: "Were it only for the purpose of replanting the five or six millions of moor and waste land which cover one-third of the Highlands, we should consider there was a sufficient reason for the formation of such a school."

Mr. B. Stiebel (Nottingham) seconded the resoultion.

Mr. Alderman Stuart (Hull) said he hoped the next time Mr. Harper brought the subject forward he would endeavour to give them some information as to the extent of waste lands suitable for forestry purposes belonging to the Crown.