87 
_ Torrey & Gray think Purslane introduced, though possibly in- 
digenous on the Missouri. Prof. Tuckerman, in a note to Josselyn, 
p- 81 (51 orig.). says of “ Wild Purcelaine” (Portulaca oleracea, L.): 
‘“* Considered to have been introduced here; but our author enables 
us to carry back the date of its introduction, without reasonable 
doubt to the first settlement of the country.” Prof. Tuckerman 
puts a certain confidence in Josselyn’s botanical knowledge, which 
he finds difficult to extend to the earlier writers. But in the case 
of so marked, and to us at least so familiar, a plant as Purslane, 
we may perhaps accept the repeated testimony to its abundant 
presence at a very early period. Champlain was half a century 
before Josselyn; and so was Strachey in Virginia, who names 
“ pnurselin” among the herbs dispersed through the woods, good 
for broths and salads” (Zravaile into Virginia, p. 120). Sagard 
also, in 1623 or ’24, found the “ pourpier, on pourceleine” in the 
country of the Hurons, and remarked that they made “tres peu 
destat” of it, though it grew “naturellement dans leurs champs 
labourez, parmy le bled et les citroiiilles ” (Hist. du Canada, 782). 
As regards the Indian cultivation of beans, it is impossible from 
the description given by explorers in the 16th century to identify 
varieties or species, and there exist no wild species in the Eastern 
United States which would seem to answer the description. It is 
certain, however, that early in that century, beans were cultivated 
as far north as the St. Lawrence, that the varieties of American 
beans observed by the early voyagers (before 1600) were regarded 
as “ proper to the country,” and that they were so regarded by the 
botanists of Europe (e. g. Clusius, and Lobel); that the northern 
Algonquins of New England and the Middle States had at least 
one, and probably two varieties of climbing (pole) beans. A Massa- 
chusetts name for beans was tuppuhquamash, and the correspond- 
ing Abnaki, a‘teba‘kowar,—both apparently derived from a verb 
meaning ‘to twine,’ ‘to wind about,’ and thereby characterizing 
the plants as climbers. Prof. Tuckerman is inclined to think that 
Josselyn has mainly in view Phaseolus vulgaris, Ll. (Joss. p. 89, 
59 orig.), a plant whose origin is unknown, “ but for which in the 
West Indies we have old authority (see Gerard’s Herbal, late 
editions), and De Soto (1542) speaks of the “ kidney beans culti- 
vated by the aboriginals of Florida “ (Pickering’s Races of Man, 
p. 396),” (Tuckerman in lit.) Dr. Trumbull thinks the American 
bean figured and described by Cornuti, pp. 184, 5 could not have 
been P. multiflorus, L., as the seeds were “ subrotundi et nigri.” 
§ 89. Publications.—1. Contributions to American Botany, VI, 
by Sereno Watson, from the Proc. Am. Acad., Vol. XL, Feb. 1876. 
I. On the Flora of Guadalupe Island, Lower California. This 
island in lat. 29° north, and about one hundred miles from the 
soast of Lower California, is now overrun by goats. What is left 
of its flora, as appears from the collections made with great exer- 
tion by the indefatigable Dr. Palmer, points to a flora similar to that 
of California, . .. and the presence of many South American 
gests some other connection between these distant re- 
types .sug n th 
gions than now exists, and even that the peculiarities of the wes- 
