1908] Owen,— Adventive Heaths of Nantucket 175 
had ever ripened seed the prevailing wind at that place would blow 
it in amongst the trees; they searched at once and were rewarded by 
the discovery of another plant of the size and apparent age of Mrs. 
Morgan's first find. This was in 1903 or 1904, and till this year 
there was no question but they were the direct offspring of Mrs. 
Atwater's plant; what new testimony has come out will be told farther 
on. ‘These new plants are in fine condition: I have seen them this 
year as well as in the two years preceding. 
When we consider the eminent botanists who have gone to Nan- 
tucket from the time of Oakes and Hitchcock down to the present 
day and have made diligent collections without ever discovering an 
Erica, it may be confidently inferred that the first specimen could not 
have been there many years before 1868, but that more may be found 
is not impossible, for persistent efforts have been made to raise the 
plant by scattering seed at randóm and also sowing it in many places. 
Mr. Sidney Starbuck told me that he once brought from Scotland 
two or three pounds of both purple and white heather seed and gave 
it to his aunt, the Mrs. Starbuck before mentioned, and that she had 
it sown on the commons. 
Mr. John Appleton tells me that the late Mr. Kimball, a well 
known seedsman and florist of Rochester, N. Y., who had a summer 
residence on the island for many years, once carried there a bushel 
of heather seed, with which he supplied those who wanted it until it 
was nearly all gone and then gave him the remainder which he sowed. 
Mrs. Dahlgren who spent many summers with her family at their 
house on the Cliff was so bent on multiplying these additions to the 
island flora that she procured from a florist directions for propagat- 
ing heather, and by following them on her own premises with con- 
stant care, she raised all three kinds,— the bell-heather, the cross- 
leaved and the Calluna or ling. І saw them once,— tiny little things 
in two-inch pots, perhaps thirty or more. She gave the plants away 
generously; I had two myself, but they soon died, and there may 
not be one living now. І should add that Mrs. Dahlgren, like others 
already mentioned, took unwearied pains to propagate this pretty 
heather out of town, with the ultimate object of naturalizing it on 
the island. Оп her drives she carried in her lap an uncovered box 
of seed which she scattered along the roadside, and also had her 
driver sow some carefully in favorable spots amongst the pines and 
on the commons. 
