BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 205 
in my power to provide myself with a very complete botanical 
library. I am, however, at present, I believe, better without it, 
for the wear and tear of travelling, with occasional falls and 
wettings, are terribly destructive to books. I should like, very 
much indeed, to possess a selection of the most useful works on the 
Flora of Russia, Siberia, and Altai; because I hope, after my tra- 
velling is over, to be permitted to spend six months at some of 
the hill-stations, arranging my collections. I shall return to 
England as soon as I am entitled to my furlough, which will be in 
April, 1850, two and a half years hence, bringing, I trust, a fine 
collection of the plants of Northern India. Being now alone, I 
have surveying (a very laborious task to an inexperienced hand) 
added to all my other work, and it is only by halting a day one I 
can write letters. 
“Tuomas THOMSON.” 
Notes and Observations on the Botany, Weather, &c., of the United 
States of America, made during a tour in that country, in 1846 
and 1847. By Ww. Anxorp Bnourrzrp, M.D., F.L.S., &c. 
(Continued from p. 161.) 
On our way to the North Valley Hill, I saw, for the first time, 
growing abundantly on the Mica slate range, those two curious 
and diminutive oaks, the Bear or Black Scrub Oak (Quercus 
Banisteri), and the Dwarf Chestnut Oak (Q. Chinquapin), as if 
Nature, in a moment of frolic or caprice, had resolved to set at 
nought allthose conventional ideas of stateliness and utility we 
attach to the forest monarch, by the creation of oaks with trunks 
in the first of these species seldom exceeding the thickness of the 
Wrist, and in the second hardly stouter than the little finger, and 
of a height proportionate to these very contracted dimensions. 
in this, as in other instances where Nature is attentively con- 
sidered, she vindicates the wisdom of her ways against the igno- 
rant and self-sufficient caviller. ‘These two dwarf oaks commonly 
grow together, and often cover, exclusively, entire tracts of the 
VOL, VII. i Y 
