32 Rhodora [FEBRUARY 
On looking at these type specimens last March with Dr. Britton, 
I was surprised to note that Prof. Peck’s plants did not seem to dif- 
fer from the Scirpus atratus of Mr. Fernald, published in RHODORA 
II: 18, 1900. A careful comparison of further material of the Adi- 
rondack collection, kindly given me by Prof. Peck, with type speci- 
mens of Mr. Fernald’s proved beyond doubt their identity. At the 
same time it appeared that they were quite distinct from the Connec- 
ticut plant. The spikelets of the latter are brown, of the former 
blackish; the achenes of the latter are much larger than those of 
the former; the bristles of the latter are comparatively short, and 
closely barbed, those of the former are over twice the length of the 
achene, and with scattered barbs. Dr. Britton, then, it seems, had 
before him in the material on which .S. Peckii was founded two dis- 
tinct things, probably of distinct geographical range: (1) the 
blackish plant of the northern mountains, represented by Professor 
Peck's collection from the Adirondacks, to which the name S. Peckii 
must be restricted ; and (2) the ferruginous plant of southern New 
England and southward, which Boeckeler, as it seems to us, correctly 
disposed of as a long-spiked variety of Scirpus polyphyllus, Vahl. In 
the cut of Scirpus Peckii in the Illustrated Flora (fig. 633), while the 
umbel and spikelet are from the Adirondack plant, the achene with 
its bristles is apparently from the Connecticut plant (compare with 
the achene in fig. 632). A specimen of the Connecticut plant in the 
Gray Herbarium was named S. Peckii by Dr. Britton ; and naturally 
Mr. Fernald on seeing specimens of the other species from Vermont 
and New Hampshire failed to recognize it as S, Peckii, and published 
it as S. atratus. 
A few additional facts regarding this beautiful species — the true 
Scirpus Peckii, Britton — may be of interest. According to RHODORA 
II: 17, Mr. Edwin Faxon is supposed to have first discovered it at 
Sutton, Vermont, in 1881. But Professor Jesup of Dartmouth Col- 
lege collected it in the vicinity of Hanover, N. H., Aug. 21, 1878. 
Soon after he sent me a specimen, querying if it was S. Eriophorum 
long gone to seed, and remarking that it looked odd. For several 
summers I was on the lookout for something to match it, but collected 
only forms of what Mr. Fernald has since distinguished as Scirpus 
atrocinctus. It was not until July 17, 1898, that I found a single 
plant of S. Peckii on the border of a peat-bog in the Green Moun- 
tains at an altitude of 1300 ft. This was sent unnamed to the Gray 
