1919] Pretz,— Trisetum spicatum in Pennsylvania 129 
ever convinced that it is a good rule to collect anything in the field 
that seems out of the ordinary. 
On July 15, 1917, the writer and his companion Mr. Walter I. 
Mattern were on their way for a day’s botanizing along the Blue 
Mountains when a sudden rain made it seem best to abandon this 
attractive trip. It was still raining lightly when it was decided that 
rather than return home a trip should be made on the tracks of the 
Lehigh Valley Railroad along the Lehigh River past a number of 
steep, shale slopes with outcropping masses of rock between Slating- 
ton and Treichler that on a number of occasions have furnished most 
entertaining and profitable botanizing. It was too wet to make it 
advisable, at least as far as comfort was concerned, to penetrate far 
into the water-soaked vegetation of the slopes, etc., soit was planned 
instead to give leisurely and thorough attention to the outcrops and 
such parts of the slope as were readily accessible from the tracks. 
The plan worked out successfully, for besides interesting general 
collections, there was discovered in this supposedly well known locality 
a small amount of Woodsia ilvensis, a rare fern in the county though 
known from four other stations, and Dryopteris Dryopteris, a still 
rarer fern previously collected only twice in the county. 
It was in this same locality about a mile and three quarters south- 
east by south of Slatington while the writer was standing beside the 
tracks busy cleaning a plant for press that he chanced to see on the 
shale cliff beside him the dried stalks of a grass that he could not 
seem to recognize as anything he knew. A stroke or two with the 
botanical pick dislodged a small clump which dropped with a dull 
splash to the ground. Water-soaked, bedraggled and soiled by coal 
dirt it was certainly not an inviting specimen and the temptation to 
abandon it was strong. But then it was clearly unfamiliar so it was 
cleaned, put into press and taken along. Later when it turned up at 
the time the writer was determining his Gramineae of the season it 
looked little more inviting and was in such poor condition that no 
trouble was taken with it. It was merely sent along unnamed to the 
Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia with the writer's usual 
contribution to the Philadelphia Botanical Club Herbarium for Mr. © 
Bayard Long to identify. Mr. Long recognized it as Trisetum 
spicatum and, writing about it, suggested the future collection of 
better material. It was only then that the writer became aware of 
the importance of this plant. 
