The China tree, Melia azedarach, is one of our quickest growing and most valued shade trees. Shall I venture to tell you more about it than Gray does? I say venture, because you, perhaps, know the tree as well as I do. It makes beautiful furniture, being striped a rich cream and dark brown. A friend who had a bedstead made of it, told me that bugs never came about it. Housekeepers use the ripe berries to put in sacks of dried fruit as a guard - of course, taking them out before cooking the fruit. The roots are put in the drinking water of hogs as a medicine. In the fall, when the berries first ripen, the robins get drunk on them. During the war, shoe-blacking was made from the ripe berries freed from stems; then reduced to charcoal and crushed to a paste with water and white of an egg. The berries supplied the sugar and oil. And lastly, ] when we see the China trees budding, we feel sure spring-time has come, for they are a cautious family, and rarely ever let Jack Frost catch them. The tree is a favorite with Young America, as the green berries furnish just the ammunition he requires for his pop-gun. I have told you all this about one of our favorite shade trees, which does not grow so far north as this place.

One variety is well-named, the Umbrella China, for its habit of growth forms a perfect umbrella. Talladega, Ala.