40 Rhodora [FEBRUARY 
his paper! upon the flora of Martha’s Vineyard. However, in the 
seventies A. .Sze//eriana was popular in America, as well as in Europe, 
as a bedding plant. For afew years it was used very extensively for 
its mass of gray foliage, and to-day, in many old-fashioned gardens in 
Maine, it is still a favorite under the name “ Dusty Miller." Professor 
Areschoug argued that because the plant rarely spreads from gardens to 
the neighboring districts and because it abounds on sand-dunes and 
beaches remote from gardens it cannot have escaped from cultivation 
to its present coastal stations. It cannot be stated with assurance that 
the plant has reached the New England sea-beaches directly from 
neighboring gardens ; but a statement made by a nurseryman, attempt- 
ing to account for the colony in County Dublin, and quoted by Mr. 
Colgan in his article above cited may as well apply to our own as to 
the Irish station: “It is a plant of the freest possible growth. Any bit 
of the top or rootstock swept out with refuse would be sure to grow... . 
Tops have often been used for mixing with cut-flowers, and may have 
assisted in the make-up of breast-bouquets, which, worn by some visitor 
to the North Bull, may have been thrown away as withered, and have 
got covered with sand." In view, then, of the very striking habit of 
the plant, its sudden appearance on sea-beaches and sand-dunes, es- 
pecially in the neighborhood of summer resorts, soon after its period of 
popularity as a bedding plant, and its probable absence from our flora 
prior to that time, there seems no doubt that Artemisia Stelleriana was 
originally introduced along our coast and that we have no reason longer 
to regard it as a species native to New England. 
Gray HERBARIUM. 
PrawT RELATIONS, by Prof. J. M. Coulter of the University of 
Chicago, is a clear and terse statement of the biological relations of 
plants to each other, to their inorganic environment, and to animals. 
It thus presents what are doubtless the most fascinating or, as one may 
say, the most sensational aspects of plant life. The illustrations are 
numerous and excellent both as to clearness and artistic effect. In 
fact they are, as in some of our current magazines, so copious and 
striking as to distract the attention and impair the power of concen- 
trating upon the text. 
1 Field and Forest, iii (1878), 119. 
? Octavo, vii and 264 pp. copiously illustrated and well indexed. Appleton 
& Co., 1899. 
