CAYENNE PEPPER.—­The name of the plant genus from which cayenne pepper is obtained is capsicum, a name also given to the product of the plant.  This genus belongs to the solanaceae, or night shade family, and has no relation to the family piperaceae, which produces the shrub yielding black pepper.  The plant which yields cayenne pepper is identical with the common red pepper of our gardens.  It is an annual, a native of tropical countries, where it thrives luxuriantly even in the dryest soils, but it is also cultivated in other parts of the world.  It grows to the height of two or three feet, and bears a fruit in the shape of a conical pod or seed-vessel, which is green when immature, but bright scarlet or orange when ripe.  This pod, with its seeds, has a very pungent taste, and is used when green for pickling, and when ripe and dried is ground to powder to make cayenne pepper, or is used for medicine.  This powder has a strongly stimulating effect, and is believed to aid digestion.  It is also employed externally to excite the action of the skin.

THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA.—­There are several groves of Big Trees in California, the most famous of which are the Calaveras grove and the Mariposa grove.  The Calaveras grove occupies what may be described as a band or belt 3,200 feet long and 700 in width.  It is between two slopes, in a depression in the mountains, and has a stream winding through it, which runs dry in the summer time.  In this grove the Big Trees number ninety-three, besides a great many smaller ones, which would be considered very large if it were not for the presence of these monarchs of the forest.  Several of the Big Trees have fallen since the grove was discovered, one has been cut down, and one had the bark stripped from it to the height 116 feet from the ground.  The highest now standing is the “Keystone State,” 325 feet high and 45 feet in circumference; and the largest and finest is the “Empire State.”  There are four trees over 300 feet in height, and 40 to 61 feet in circumference.  The tree which was cut down occupied five men twenty-two days, which would be at the rate of one man 110 days, or nearly four months’ work, not counting Sundays.  Pump augers were used for boring through the giant.  After the trunk was severed from the stump it required five men with immense wedges for three days to topple it over.  The bark was eighteen inches thick.  The tree would have yielded more than 1,000 cords of four-foot wood and 100 cords of bark, or more than 1,100 cords in all.  On the stump of the tree was built a house, thirty feet in diameter, which the Rev. A.H.  Tevis, an observant traveler, says contains room enough in square feet, if it were the right shape, for a parlor 12x10 feet, a dining-room 10x12, a kitchen 10x12, two bed-rooms 10 feet square each, a pantry 4x8, two clothes-presses 1-1/2 feet deep and 4 feet wide, and still have a little to spare!  The Mariposa grove is part of a grant made by Congress to be set