BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 211 
tacles soon become filled with a vegetation perfectly spontaneous, 
whilst its origin is a problem not yet satisfactorily solved by phy- 
siologists. It is farther reported, I know not with what truth, 
that all attempts to naturalize the Ve/wmbium in other localities 
about Philadelphia, as well as to cultivate it in ponds for ornament, 
have hitherto proved abortive. 
August 18th. Visited the Navy-yard, which, like every other 
public institution in America, the Mint not excepted, is open to 
the inspection of the community, without fee or formality ; nor does 
any inconvenience or interruption to business arise from this un- 
restricted admission, as is alleged would result from the adoption 
of the same liberal system in England. There was not much 
going on in the building-slips, and in this, as in all the dock- 
yards I visited in America, I was surprised at the little use made 
of machinery as a substitute for manual labour, in a country where 
wages are high, though hands are plentiful, and under a govern- 
ment professing to be the cheapest in the world. No people un- 
derstand the economy of machinery better than the Americans, or 
carry out the principle of dispensing with or abridging human 
labour so fully in practice as they do; steam is, with them, the 
aight arm of enterprize, and is everywhere seen lending its aid to 
productive industry on the most limited, as well as on the most ex- 
tended, scale of operation. I found Chenopodium glaucum growing 
in the dockyard, on moist spots near the water, and on a large 
piece of waste ground at the end of Fourth Street ; this is, I be- 
lieve, a rare species in America, and probably of comparatively 
recent introduction, as the botanists of that country, and even of 
Philadelphia, seem very little or not at all acquainted with it. 
Four other species of the same genus, C. album, ambrosioides, an- 
thelminticum, and botryoides are found in waste places in and 
around the city, besides a fifth, allied to our C. urbicum, but cer- 
tainly distinct from that and C. rubrum, for which last, I believe, 
1t passes here, and to which I am desirous of drawing the atten- 
tion of American botanists, as being probably a nondescript. The 
plant has much resemblance to C. anthelminticum in its inflo- 
rescence, but is quite destitute of the strong smell of that species, 
