growth of shrubs and succulent plants. Time was when such localities were as unpromising to vegetation as any which now compose our Californian valleys. It may be said that this theory proves too much; that if trees take up so much water from the soil, the surface ground must necessarily be desiccated, and thus rendered unfit for cereal crops. This does not follow. While it is admitted that during the growing season the soil beneath forest-trees may contain a proportion of water smaller than that without their range, it is also true that a large portion of the San Joaquin Valley, having a known depth of seventy or 100 feet, being the product of denudation and not retaining the rain-fall of winter near the surface, is capable of sustaining a sparse vegetation only so long as frequent rains keep the substratum in a moist condition; consequently, the forest would obtain its main supply of water by the trees projecting their roots downward far beyond the limits of surface moisture. But our argument is now directed primarily to a hygienic point, and secondarily to the means whereby unproductive land may be brought to a condition in which crops may be insured at a minimum expense and at the greatest profit to the cultivator. In a future paper I will resume this subject, and endeavor to prove that forest-trees return to the land and air more moisture than they extract from surface soil. The conclusions apparent from the facts and arguments herein advanced are the following: That forest-trees in sufficient numbers will absorb, from deep as well as from superficial strata, a sufficient quantity of water to establish regular subterranean currents, and that whatever miasma may be combined with or held in solution by the water will thus be carried off, or have its toxic properties in whole or in part neutralized; that the water thus exhaled will be diffused through the atmosphere in such quantity as to be returned in great part to the surface soil by precipitation; that the high summer temperature may thus be so modified as to reduce the nocturnal heat below 60°; that the causes thus operating to prevent vegetable fermentation, or to dissipate miasma if developed, would protect the valley from regular visitations of paludal fevers; that the modification of climate thus induced would, under ordinary circumstances, insure average crops of grain in localities which are now dependent either on unusually wet seasons or on artificial irrigation; and that, while immediate benefits would thus be conferred upon the farmer by extensive tree-planting, the remuneration would be cumulative, not only in the regularly increasing value of his timber, but in the prospective reclamation, by natural processes without absolute expense, of land which is now utterly useless. THE A FANTASY OF ROSES. IN THREE PARTS.-PART II. HE dining-room at Mossland was a large room much longer than broad, with windows reaching almost to the floor. The walls made you think of rose-clouds flitting over a gray sky, sky and clouds alike covered with a filmy veil of silver. The windows were draped with curtains of rose-damask falling in heavy folds to the floor, and then melting away into the ashen gray of the carpet, which was crossed in diamonds by threads of rose. Between the windows, which were three in number, there were mirrors of the same height; the marble slab at the base of one upholding a fernery, that of the other a globe of gold-fish. In the rose-tinted arches over windows and mirrors were marble busts, shining purely white as the moonlight bursting through a cloud. At one end of the room stood a broad low cabinet of rose-wood, the shelves filled with rare and curious souvenirs of travel. At the opposite end of the room was a similar cabinet filled with books, and had you opened them you would have found in each, traced in delicate characters, the name, "Fay Lingarde." Across one corner stood a small upright piano, also of rose - wood, with keys of pearl; across another, the buffet. Now the last trace of the late dinner had been removed from the table; and on the low sofa, drawn up by one side of the open wood-fire, Fay was sitting with her father. His arm was lying about her, while his hand was softly stroking the ends of the golden hair; so they always sat. Directly in front of the fire another gentleman was sitting. The full blaze of the fire lit up his face, which did not need to shrink from the searching light, for it bore the impress of a noble generous nature; as old a man as Mr. Lingarde, yet there was not a line of silver in the dark hair, and the smile and light of the eye were trusting as a child's. Children and animals all worshiped Ray Llorente, and on the occasion of his coming to Mossland the great mastiff, who almost merited his name, "Lion," never failed to slip into the room to make a mat for his feet. At the other corner of the fire-place, upon a low stool drawn far back into the shadow, which her black dress made deeper and more intense, Roberta sat, apparently watching the flickering rays of light chase the shadows over the carpet, for her head was slightly bent forward, and she did not once raise her eyes. At the table, farther back, engaged in looking over a pile of letters and papers, sat Louis Valois. His name, as well as the quick vivacious play of his features, he had inherited from his French ancestry. Valois had once been De Valois until some revolution had beheaded it. He was one of the few men who can be called handsome: features perfectly regular, yet with a mobility of expression which saved them from insipidity; hands and feet whose perfect shape was still suggestive of masculine strength and endurance, and around and about him such a fire and dash and bloom of youth that you would be forever forgetting whether his eyes were gray or black, whether his hair were brown or of the purplish hue of the gods. The tones of his voice would linger in your memory and rouse the sleeping echoes of your heart. For more than a year he had made one of Mr. Lingarde's family. He was by nature and education an artist. In reality he did exactly what he chose; sketched and painted when the fancy took him, and at other times shut himself in the library for days together, doing the work which he had allowed to await his pleasure. From where he sat the only face which he could see was Roberta's. had only given her a passing glance as she first took her seat, but that glance had brought the quick color to her cheek and weighed her eyes down to the carpet, while Louis saw her answering look upon every page which he opened. He "And so you have really missed me, my pet?" said Mr. Lingarde, fondly, in answer to some words of Fay's. "Missed you!"—with a world of sweet reproach in voice and look-"missed you! You know without asking." "But you have had no one to interfere with your pleasure, as I most certainly should have done, for I like not to see the roses of your cheeks sinking down into your canvas, any more than to have the purple from your canvas circle itself about your eyes. Confess that you have been working too hard. Llorente, I gave you charge of this little girl. I shall call you to an account as a faithless guardian." "O! papa, it is because you have not seen me for two weeks. Indeed, I am quite well." "I have taken the young ladies out for a ride every morning, and have called to inquire after their health every evening," said Mr. Llorente, lazily. “And on rainy days when we could not go to ride he was so kind as to come over and read to us," interrupted Fay. "Miss Fay does not add that I proved myself so tiresome a reader, or else made such an unfortunate selection, that she nearly went to sleep; while Miss Ro berta could not even tell me the subject I had inflicted upon them." At the mention of her name, Roberta started as if just made conscious of the presence of others. "It is very bad of you to say that; one might almost call it malicious," said Fay, vivaciously. "We were very interested, were we not, Roberta?" "What was it about, then?" asked her father. "It was Ruskin's Stones of Venice," answered Fay. "We had been talking about it the evening before, and as Roberta had never been in Venice, Mr. Llorente brought it for her to read, or rather to read to us. After you had gone, Mr. Llorente," she continued, "Roberta played for me the most ravishing piece of music that I have ever heard; she said that the description which you had read recalled it to her. I wish so much that she would play it now"-turning to Roberta. "And I," said Mr. Llorente. "I could not give it the same effect as then, when my imagination was filled with it," answered Roberta, shrinking farther back into the shadow. "It was not an improvisation, then?" "O, no, indeed; it was a song—a song without words-that one of the sisters used to play for me. I do not know that it was ever published." "It was not one of Mendelssohn's, then?" "No; it was something even more divine, if possible." "Then, if it is not your own, you will surely not refuse to gratify me." "Do, pray do!" breathed rather than entreated Fay. Louis Valois dropped the pencil which he had been holding in his hand, and Roberta raising her eyes just then met his gaze full of entreaty. Mr. Lingarde alone looked indifferently into the fire. There was between him and Roberta a strange chill reserve which nothing "I did not change it," answered Roberta. "I think I never played anything twice alike—one would need to be an automaton to do that." seemed able to break down. Rarely is not just the same as you played it bedid either address the other in direct fore-it can not be—it is so much more conversation, yet Roberta was acutely sad. I did not feel like weeping then, conscious the moment her father enter- and now it seems as though I could ed her presence. In appearance she never shed tears enough. Tell me, why resembled him in an extraordinary de- did you change it?" gree the power of his face was repeated and intensified in hers; while Fay had not a single feature of her father's family. It may have been the strong resemblance to his lost wife which made the father so tender to her. Certain it was that all the love of his strong nature blossomed for her alone. Throughout Roberta's childhood he contented himself with seeing her at rare intervals, and had even left her for a year longer than was necessary at the convent. Roberta rose to go to the piano with out further words. She sat for a full moment without striking a note; then, like the beating of a heart, one chord after another fell from her hands and passed into a movement full of melody, intense and passionate-the ecstasy of melancholy, the bitterness of sweetness. One harmony grew and blended into another, yet through it all you could feel rather than hear the theme threading out the story, as one might pluck the petals from a rose, one by one, and each in falling making the fragrance sweeter. At times, with strong impetuous rush, the notes followed each other in quick succession, and then would float away as softly as thistle - down before the breath of August; then, with a sudden leap, passing up into the higher notes, the measure grew delirious with whirling dizzy motion, until to hear seemed to die, and dying sweet; then, with a faltering shudder, the music sunk into the plaint of solitude, the repining of one alone, the hunger and thirst of a soul which will never be satisfied, and with a broken tumult of sweet sounds it shivered into silence. "O, Roberta!" cried Fay, the tears glistening in her eyes, "I'm sure that She had risen from the piano and approached the fire to resume her seat, when she heard her father speak to Mr. Llorente. His lips were not moving, but certainly she heard these words: "Another Alice; one can never depend upon a character such as that." Llorente sat shading his eyes with his hand. "Thank you, Miss Roberta," he said; "I never heard a measure so strange as that. What did you say it was called?" Mr. "I think Sister Agatha called it the 'Song of a falling star,' or perhaps we named it so; I do not remember: but we always called it the 'Song without words."" "What voice, what words, could ever express it?" said Louis Valois, involuntarily. "The heart which should make the attempt would surely break under the burden, or burn with the fire which flows in its strains." "I can not imagine an inmate of a convent playing such music," observed Llorente, still shading his eyes with his hand. "It is well that music is above and beyond all language, for nothing base or ignoble ever finds expression in it.” "Roberta," said Fay, quite suddenly, "while you were playing, there came into your face just the expression which I have tried to bring, but could not succeed in bringing, into the face of my Rebecca." "And is your great picture at last finished?" inquired Louis, with sudden interest. "I have been longing all the evening to ask if you had succeeded in of the other lay the whole effect of the working it out?" "It is as nearly finished as it will ever be," answered Fay, discontentedly. "I shall never be any better satisfied.” "There speaks the artist nature. You will never be satisfied with anything you finish; for it is the incompleteness which makes you try again. Let us see it, and pass our judgment upon it." "No, indeed; I'm not ready yet." "Give me permission to go up and bring it down," entreated Louis. "The picture will look different, even to you, when taken out of the room where you have worked upon it. There the ideal which is in your mind is stamped upon every object, so that wherever you turn your eyes you can see it a thousand times more perfect and beautiful than the one which you have really painted. I shall go, shall I not?" He had risen from the table. Fay hesitated. Before she could speak Louis was out of the room, when, as if struck by a sudden thought, Fay exclaimed: "But the frame! It will not look half as well unframed. I have a superstition about my picture. Pray, Roberta, go and tell him that the frame which was too large for my sea-picture just fits it." "I know where it is, dear," said Roberta, "and it shall not be brought down until it is as properly framed as if it were to be sent to the exhibition." With noiseless steps she passed up the stairs. The door of the studio stood ajar. Into the window, from which the curtain was still pushed aside, the trembling light of the young moon stole, for the clouds had rolled away as the night-chill settled down. Louis Valois was standing with his back to the door gazing upon the painting. The artist had given color to the word - picture in Ivanhoe, where Rebecca is in the act of giving the jewels to the Lady Rowena. In the contrast between the dark mournful beauty of the one and the rich sunny brightness picture. There was a look of innocent uncomprehending surprise upon Rowena's face, as she held the casket in her hand, half of its rich contents poured out in her lap. But the study, the focus of the picture, was concentrated in the face of Rebecca-the face of a woman who suffers, who renounces. It was as if she were reading the future of Ivanhoe in that farewell look into Rowena's soul. There was a divine beauty in her countenance; the beauty of the soul. Louis Valois did not move nor speak as Roberta entered and stood by his side. He was conscious, painfully conscious to his very finger-tips, the moment that she crossed the threshold. He longed to speak to utter some commonplace words-but he felt as if chained to silence. Five minutes before he would have given the world, in his extravagance, for the opportunity to speak a word to Roberta alone, and now he seemed in a trance, unable to move. Roberta spoke first: "Shall we take it down? There is a frame in the closet which Fay wishes it put into." Her natural even tones made Louis himself at once. "Do you know, I thought Miss Fay had imprisoned your very self in the canvas, and it was only your wraith which had been sitting so quietly down - stairs, and that was why the music was so awful in its ghostly mysteriousness. I hardly dared turn my head when you glided into the room without even the echo of a footfall." "Are you very sure now that I am real?" asked Roberta, with attempted playfulness. "Yes, perfectly so; the strange likeness has vanished, now that I see you side by side. It is a wonderful creation, though. Little Fay has more genius than we all. I did not dream that she could produce anything like this. It was a mere shadow two weeks ago; she |