character, and were open to be made, with a little tact, by every sharp eye and clear head. The English can also furnish us with the model for this participation of unprofessional persons in the observation of Nature. Not only their many colonies, their residencies, and their domains, in the farthest parts of the globe, permit individuals to make numerous new and valuable observations, but there are also in England numbers of wealthy persons who, having no official positions, are animated by a spontaneous scientific enthusiasm, and are able to come forth again and again as patrons of scientific researches. Thus the gap between amateurs and professionals in the sciences is necessarily becoming narrower. The closer relation of the world of students to the public must, on the other side, give heart to the individual-yes, raise up a positive desire in him to make known what he has observed, and inspire him to experiments of his own. Community in work of this kind can already show its results. A perusal of the journal "Nature," in which students and laymen publish their researches and observations from the fields of science in all the five quarters of the globe, wherever Englishmen dwell, will illustrate this in the plainest manner. Inquiry is active, then, and is stimulated by the constant contribution of new facts. The most distinguished men of science are not ashamed to take part in these proceedings; but their communications give the nation opportunity to become immediately acquainted with their researches, to estimate their value, and rejoice over the good that accrues to the nation from them. In Germany such a usage could, in consequence of the closer relations of the different members of society, be made to be of much wider significance than in England. -Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from "Humboldt."

FOOD AND FIBER PLANTS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

IT

By J. S. NEWBERRY.

T has happened to me to visit nearly forty tribes of the native population of North America, and many of these at a time when they had had little or no intercourse with the whites. As a physician and botanist, my attention was naturally directed to the use of plants among them for food, and as remedies. I made many notes on these subjects, and, as they have never been published, and contain some. items that may be interesting, it has seemed to me worth while to put them on record. Most of the observations to which I have referred were made a quarter of a century ago among the Indians of the Far West, remote from civilization, and where they were living in the "state of nature." The plants, of which the Indians I have visited have made use, are the following:

1. Maize (Zea mais), our Indian corn, seems to have been the most widely diffused and most important of all the kinds of vegetable food employed by the native population. In all parts of North and South America, where the climate was favorable, the whites found corn cultivated by the aborigines, and in the tombs of Peru as well as in the mounds of the mound-builders, ears of corn have been discovered, which prove that it was an important element of subsistence as far back as human records extend. Even the nomadic Indians who inhabited the forest-covered region between the Mississippi and Atlantic had their corn-fields and their patches of beans and squashes, and succotash (the Indian name) was the dish most esteemed in their cuisine, and is almost the only one which has been adopted by the whites.

In the region west of the Mississippi only a limited district is adapted to the cultivation of maize. It is a plant which finishes its growth and ripens its seed within three or four months, and it therefore matures within the tropical summer which prevails even to the northern boundary of the United States. But it requires both warmth and moisture; hence in the dry regions of the Far West it can only be cultivated in few localities, and there attains but imperfect development. In California, where so many fruits, flowers, and grains reach unequaled perfection, the cultivation of corn is rarely successful. Even where irrigation supplies the necessary moisture and the midday sun is hotter than in any Eastern State, the cloudless sky permits such rapid radiation that the nights are always cool, often cold, and the warm, moist nights of midsummer in the Mississippi Valley, when the corn may be heard to grow, never occur. On the table-lands of Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico corn is quite extensively cultivated, but under difficulties, and never with what we should call success. The plant is always small, the grain light in texture and usually of some fancy color, and it is not uncommon to see the bread or cakes baked from it of a positive blue. Among the Moquis of Northeastern Arizona, where the plains that are cultivated are sandy, the seed-corn is dropped to the bottom of holes twelve to fifteen inches deep, made with a stick. Though dry at the surface, the sand is moist below, having absorbed all the water furnished by the snows of winter, and the cloudless sun warms the soil so that the grains germinate even at that depth. When the growing plant rises above the surface of the ground it immediately shoots out its ears, and the field when the crops. mature looks as though it had been inundated and sand deposited around the stems to half their height. The color of the grain is usually blue, and the bread made from it and baked between two flat, smooth stones by the Moquis, though well flavored, looks like blue wrapping-paper.

2. Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). It has been demonstrated that one or several kinds of beans were generally cultivated in America at the time of the discovery by Columbus. The "Lima-bean" was certainly

unknown in Europe before it was received from America, and that is probably true of other varieties. Among the Pueblo Indians of the table-lands, and the Mohaves on the Colorado, we found many different kinds of beans in cultivation. Some of these were of excellent quality, more delicate in texture and flavor than any cultivated by the whites.

Among the Mexicans and the inhabitants of our Territories bordering on Mexico the frijole is the most important article of diet, and in all campaigns and exploring expeditions in the West our people have come to consider beans as the most useful element in the commissary department. In making forced marches where the least possible weight could be carried, two articles of food were chosen in preference to all others, viz., beans and coffee; if only one could be taken, that was always the bean, which possesses more and more varied nutritious elements than any other fruit or seed cultivated by man.

3. Psoralea esculenta (pomme blanche). The root of this leguminous plant has been for centuries an article of food among the Indians inhabiting the Rocky Mountains and the plains bordering them. It is frequently referred to by the earlier travelers in that region, and was sometimes their main subsistence during the intervals when for any reason game was not to be had, and transported supplies had been exhausted. The root is white and farinaceous, but has a negative flavor, and as it nowhere exists in great quantity, it has been rather a make-shift than a staple, and its use has been abandoned wherever the supplies furnished by the white man have been attainable. The plant is about a foot high, with hairy stems and leaves, and with compact spikes, of bluish-white flowers. The root is tuberous, an inch or more in diameter, white, farinaceous, and wholesome.

4. Camassia esculenta (camass). Over all the country drained by the Columbia River, and especially the plains and mountain valleys about its sources, the camass grows in considerable abundance, and it has been not only a common resource for the Indians inhabiting that region, but certain localities where it is found in large quantities have taken their names from it, and they are places of resort for the purpose of gathering it. One of these is the somewhat noted Camass prairie on the line of travel from the Upper Missouri to the Columbia. The plant is liliacious, has linear leaves, a scape usually twelve to eighteen inches in height, bearing pretty blue or white flowers. The bulb is about an inch in diameter, mucilaginous, sweetish, and quite nutritious. Where it abounds it is gathered in large quantities, baked, and stored for winter use.

5. Peucedanum farinosum (biscuit-root, couse). In the country bordering the Columbia and in Northern California there are many plants which belong to the umbelliferous genus Peucedanum, some with yellow and a few with white flowers. The foliage is much dissected, sometimes capillary like that of the fennel. Among these is

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one which has a round or oblong, white, farinaceous root somewhat like a small parsnip. It is called couse, or biscuit-root, by the Oregon Indians, and is quite an important source of food among them. It is gathered and dried for winter use, is then ground between stones to a kind of flour, and of this a palatable and nutritious cake is made. It is also sometimes boiled with meat.

6. Apios tuberosa (ground-nut). In all the United States on or east of the Mississippi the twining stem and purple flowers of the ground-nut are well known to the country boys, for they have learned that at the base of that stem are tubers which may be eaten and with a little make-believe enjoyed. These tubers were quite as well known to the aboriginal inhabitants, and to them they were a more important article of food. They are, however, small, somewhat woody, and in all respects inferior to the potato, which superseded them wherever attainable.

7. Helianthus tuberosus (Jerusalem artichoke). This plant is usually supposed to have been introduced from Europe, but Dr. Gray has given good reasons for believing that it is a native of this country, and that its tubers were used by the Indians of the Mississippi Valley for food. It has been said to be a variety of H. doronicoides, but is probably a form of H. giganteus.

8. Helianthus annuus (sunflower). In the central part of the continent Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming-are large areas of open ground which sustain a vigorous growth of the sunflower. It is always an evidence of good soil where it grows, and the magnitude of the stem, which is often six or seven feet high, and the flowers four to five inches broad, measures the richness of that soil. Nowhere in nature do the flowers become so large and the seeds so abundant as in the cultivated variety, but the seeds have long been used for food by the Indians, and it is probable that the plant grew larger about their villages than we now find it in the dry and comparatively sterile regions of the Far West. The Indians use the seeds for food, and sometimes extract an oil from them which is employed for the hair, or to lubricate or paint the face or body.

9. Wyethia robusta (Nutt.). In Oregon and Northern California I found the Indians gathering the seeds of a species of Wyethia, which Dr. Gray considers that described by Nuttall. On the east side of the Sierra Nevada, several species of the genus are very widely distributed, the larger ones having flowers which resemble those of Inula, and in many dry regions for a brief interval in the spring the surface is quite covered with their broad ovate leaves, and the scene made brilliant by their showy golden flowers. Their glory is, however, short-lived, for early in the summer the flowers disappear, the leaves. become dry and brown, and rustle under the feet like those which fall from the trees in our forests with the autumn frosts. The achenia of Wyethia are relatively large, and contain a sufficient amount of

albumen to afford considerable nutrition, but the chaff is quite in excess of the kernel, and, when bruised together in their rude mortars, the Indians are compelled to gorge quantities of the material to satisfy their hunger. It is poor food at best, but is a welcome resort when, as it often happens, they are on the verge of starvation.

10. NUT-PINES.-In various parts of the Far West grow species of Pinus in which the seeds are of unusual size. The primary object of this is undoubtedly to furnish an adequate amount of prepared food to the germinating plant in regions where the struggle for existence is desperate, not with competing forms of vegetable life, but against the sterility of the soil or the severity of the climate. Incidentally this provision of Nature is of great benefit to a variety of animals, and even to man himself. It is evident that this special device for securing the perpetuation of the species is vicarious with the development of the wing upon the seed by which it is caught in the wind and its distribution favored. Where the seed is unusually large and heavy the samara can do little for its transportation, and where it is largest the wing is reduced to a simple raphe, or has entirely disappeared. For the most part these nut-pines are the inhabitants of arid regions where the amount of animal life is small, and therefore there are few enemies by which the seed would be destroyed. And there the sterility is such that any device by which the seed was carried away from the protecting shade and the fertilizing influence of the parent tree would be destructive rather than protective. Hence the seeds are

wingless, and are dropped among the decaying leaves that gather under and about it. To the Indians these pine-nuts are in some regions not only an important but almost an indispensable source of subsistence; they gather them systematically, as our farmers harvest their crops, and, in cases where for any reason a failure of this crop occurs, some tribes or bands have been brought nearly or quite to starvation for the want of the nutriment they afford.

The list of the nut-pines of the Far West includes the following species: Pinus Sabiniana and P. Coulteri, of California; P. albicaulis and P. flexilis, which grow on the mountains of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, etc.; P. edulis and its variety, P. monophylla, of the arid districts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico; and, finally, P. Parryana and P. cembroides, of Lower California and Northern Mexico. Of these, P. Sabiniana has large, ovoid, massive cones, six to eight inches in length and four to six inches in diameter, of which the surface bristles with strong and curved spines. The seeds are as large as good-sized beans, and of much the same form. The tree grows to a moderate or large size, but never forms forests. It is generally found scattered over the rocky foot-hills of the mountains, up to the height of three or four thousand feet-its great spiny cones, its spreading form, and blue-green foliage, making it everywhere conspicuous.