16 
less’ (Wood), whereas my specimens uniformly show “a bractlet.”’ 
No doubt the mistake has been made from the fact that the bractlet 
is deciduous, falling off some time after the flower opens, indeed, 
but before the fruit is ripe. 
LarayveErte, Inn. 
§ 11. Plants for Sale—Sets of Dr. E. Palmer’s Florida and 
Bermuda marine algz; also small sets of Kellogg & Hartford’s Cali- 
fornia Plants, and Ghiesbreght’s Chiapas (Mexico) Plants for 
sale with Prof. Daniel C. Eaton, New Haven, Conn.—A few sets of 
Dr. Palmer’s other plants from East Florida and the Keys may be 
obtained of 8S, Watson, Cambridge, Mass., at $8 the hundred. 
§ 12. Silphium.—Are Si/phium integrifolium and S. trifolia- 
tum now regarded as two distinct species or only varieties of one ? 
I am inclined to the view that they are only varieties. While 
botanizing on the Western prairies, I have often found two varieties 
so varying in their characters as to render it very difficult to deter- 
mine where they should be placed—whether under S. integrifolium 
or S. trifoliatum as described by Gray. In 1866, on the prairies of 
Kansas, I found eighteen stalks or stems growing from one and the 
same root. Eleven of these stems had their leaves all opposite in 
pairs. Seven of them were trifoliate from the lowest to the wpper- 
most leaves. Stems grooved, rather rough, but not 4-angular save 
a few which were very slightly so: about 5° high : panicle loose ; 
achenia not answering perfectly to the description of either of the 
above mentioned species. 
VineELanpd, N. J. 
§ 13. Painesville, Ohio.—For several vears I have noticed that 
in the autumn Scirpus atrovirens, Muhl., and S. polyphyllus, Vahl., 
are frequently viviparous, producing on the: spikelets small bulbs 
crowned with small leaves. As the season advances they mature 
and fall, the heavy end striking the mud. They send out roots 
(there are rudimentary roots before the bulbs fall) and form new 
lants. 
Mr. Watson informs me that specimens of S. polyphyllus show- 
ing these viviparous growths are in the Herbarium at Cambridge, 
collected in Connecticut by Dr. Barratt and in Virginia by Mr. 
Curtiss, but he is not aware that they have been noticed in S, atro- 
virens. 
Last year I was fortunate in discovering the long lost Fissidens 
hyalinus, Wils. and Hook., but this year I failed to detect it in the 
same locality. I send also specimens of Amarantus Blitum, L., and 
Hydrodictyon utriculatum, Roth, collected in this vicinity. 
< H. C. Bearpsiee. 
§ 14. Supposed revival of an ancient plant.—Th. Heldrich, 
Prof. of Botany in Athens, thinks that an unknown Glaucium 
which has appeared among the scoria of the Laurian silver mines 
may have lain dormant there from the time of the cessation of the 
working of these mines, 40 years B.C., till the recent re-examina- 
tion of this scoria by the Company whose dispute with the Greek 
government has of late attracted attention. The locality gives an 
interest to the story greater than the probability of the supposition. 
Joun Hussey. 
Gero. SCARBOROUGH. 
