142 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Nov. 



an\ one not a botanist and close observer would not have doubted 

 about as a part of the pristine prairie, began to show fine patches 

 of Sntilacina racemosa, at this time in fresh full blocm, while 

 along the fences there was a continuous row of bloodroot, this of 

 course long past flowering. These and a few other plants which 

 by nature are strictly woodland plants, will maintain a foothold 

 and even flourish in the open, long after their forest shelter has 

 been removed, so long as neither the plow nor the ruminants 

 disturb them. 



The wooded belt when reached did not prove to be the wild 

 woodland I had hoped to see; nor was there river or even any 

 streamlet coursing through or near it. What I had come to was 

 but a series of well kept groves of young trees, such as the farmers 

 had with excellent economy not only permitted to remain, but had 

 kept clear of woody undergrowths, permitting not much except 

 the native herbaceous plants and a scattered growth of currant 

 and gooseberry bushes, natives of the soil, to remain. The most 

 common tree was beech, but also there was no dearth of red oak, 

 some white oak and bur oak, an occasional ash, more than an 

 occasional linden and black maple, besides such things of smaller 

 stature as Carpinus and the hop hornbeam, besides a Crataegus 

 species or two. In less elevated and rather damp places I noted 

 the presence of Dirca palustris and Enonymus ohovaUis. Where 

 the shade was deepest, chiefly under the beeches and maples, 

 there was abundance of Arisaema and of bloodroot, besides 

 yellow violets, and clustered between and upon the superficial 

 root-arms of the beeches was a great abundance of Unifolium 

 canadense. In places less shady, and where they were partly 

 open to the sun, there were beautiful patches of. Geranium 

 Robertianum in full flower at the time; also here and there a tuft 

 of scarlet columbine. I have observed scarlet columbines all the 

 way across the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 

 and have long known them in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, 

 and in both the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada. Botanists 

 in Europe and in America have distinguished several species, 

 and T doubt not most of them are valid. This one of western 

 Ontario at once presented one mark that was new to me among 

 this group. The basal leaves were more elegantly and narrowly 

 cut than any I had observed either east or west, and also they 

 were of an almost whitish glaucous hue, though all of a sudden 

 the stem leaves all, even the lower, were of the usual green of 

 columbine leaves. And this plant is certainly not Aquilegia 

 canadensis, for the sure mark of that is that its follicles when 

 grown and mature spread away from one another at the top, and 

 are even almost recurved. In the plant of western Ontario the 

 follicles closely cohere to the very tips, and are even then con- 



