105 
tunity for development, and an ardent love for nature gave truthful 
direction to his taste. In 1878 appeared in an unexpected quarter 
a little treatise upon ^ the " Ferns of Kentucky,'* which surprised all 
fern lovers by the beauty and novel form of its ilhistrations. These 
were etchings by Mr. Williamson's own hand, transferred to the 
lithographic stone. This was soon after followed by the publication 
of a work ilhistrating the ferns of the region covered by Gray's Man- 
ual. In this work the plates were printed directly from the etchings, 
and the book appeared under the modest title of '* Fern Etchings," 
This work not only supplied a real want in the world of science, but 
surprised and delighted all lovers of the art he was so successfully 
cultivating, and the best art-critics were loud in encomium. Encour- 
aged by this, he was giving himself to the fuller cultivation of his 
powers in that direction, when his health failed, and he was taken 
away at the outset of a career which gave such promise of brilliancy, 
leaving behind him a widowed mother, to whom he had manifested 
a tender filial devotion. His friend Mr. Davenport has done justice 
to the sterling excellencies of his character in a touching sketch in a 
recent number of the Botanical Gazette, 
J 
Botanical Notes. 
The May-flower, — It has been suggested that the delicate and 
niodest Httle flower which we call the May-flower should be adopted- 
as the emblem of the loyalists, because it is in full bloom 
at the season of the year when they landed on these rockv shores. 
In connection wath this it may not be out of ph 
place to mquire as 
v^^iiij\^,^Llwil Willi LIIJ3 it lliay iJUL \J\^ \J\X\. VJI ^Afc*.v.v, Lv ii»vj".--w "- 
to the use of the word May-flower or " May-blossom " in the past ; 
and esnerinlK/ i-n cicV YvViat wnc t-lip Mnv-iJmpi^r nf the. lovalistsl Was 
May-flower of the loyalists? Was 
spring favorite, or was it some 
-^it^u iviay-nower laenticai witn our sprmg lavorue, or was it sumt 
other plant, to us unknown, or if known, called by some other name. 
Our May-flower has been named by botanists Epigcea repens or 
^^^\^\d.x\i\\\^\_ creeps on the grou fid— d, name very appropriate to its 
habit of grow, thas it forms patches of foliage. ... It belongs to 
the great family of the heaths, and its nearest allies in this country are 
the bear-berry, spicy wintergreen and tea-berry. They, like the May- 
flower have evergreen leaves, and differ in this respect from most of 
the American heaths. 
But the purpose of these remarks is not so much to describe the 
May-flower and its habits as to inquire whether this flower of ours 
^vas the May-flower of the loyalists. The writer was very much 
surprised many vears ago, on being told by an old lady who came 
here with the loyalists, that our plant {Epigcea repens) was not the 
^ay-flower. Among the wild flowers that were afterwards shown to 
"er she at once recognized one as the true May-flower. This was the 
plant which is now called the spring beauty {Claytonia Caroliniana), 
a delicate little plant with two opposite leaves, which are not unlike 
^n Indian's canoe-paddle in shape, and having a cluster of noddmg 
pink flowers between the leaves The short stem which the sprmg 
^eauty annually sends up comes from a little brown tuber buried 
^eep in the rich mould of the hardwood forest. The plant differs 
