THK PI.ANT WORI.D 137 



be named. One kind is bruised by fishermen and cast into small arms 

 of the sea, the juice stupefying the fishes so that they can be easily 

 picked up. But I will close this hasty memorandum with mention of 

 the use made of the prickly pear by the roadrunner, a bird peculiar to 

 California. When this sagacious bird finds a rattlesnake asleep it will 

 gather joints of the cactus and carefully surround his snakeship, and then 

 rudely awake him by dropping a joint upon him. When he finds no 

 escape he is said to commit suicide. This story has been told by many 

 who claimed to have been eyewitnesses in early days, but not, I believe, 

 by any naturalist of undoubted veracity. There is little reason to doubt 

 its truth. 



Editor, The Plant World: 



In your issue of Thk Plant World for May, page 121, you quote 

 Prof. Underwood as having reached the conclusion that the royal ferns 

 of America and Europe, hitherto known as the same species iOsmunda 

 regalis) are really distinct. For many years I made, with Prof. Leo 

 Lesquereux, comparisons of American with European species, and have 

 continued comparisons during later years, and am fully satisfied there 

 are no distinctions to separate these ferns from the two continents. 

 While the distinct rounded auricle on the lower side of base is not so 

 common with our American Osmunda, these forms occur in all parts of 

 Beaver County, and the pinnules bear the rounded lobes as in the 

 European varieties. Ira F. Mansfield. 



Beaver, Pa. 



Rev. J. M. Bates, of Callaway, Nebraska, calls attention to a state- 

 ment made in ' ' The Families of Flowering Plants ' ' * that Gerardias and 

 their allies turn black in drying. He says : " In our dry climate I am 

 able with care to dry G. aspera and G. Besseyana without much loss of 

 green." Mr. Pollard's statement of the general fact was true, but there 

 are undoubted exceptions to the rule, as not only the species mentioned 

 by Mr. Bates, but several Southern species, can be preserved with the 

 colors unchanged. 



With regard to the distribution of Marty?iia, the unicorn plant, 

 Mr. Bates writes : " You state the range of Martynia as ' tropical Amer- 

 ican.' Britton and Brown say : ' Native of Mississippi Valley from Iowa 

 and Illinois southward.' I have heard several observers say that it grew 

 wild in southern South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas." Here, again, 

 the statement of fact was meant to be general rather than specific, as in 

 a work devoted to plant families it would be impossible to give the 

 generic distributions with exactness. 



*The Plant World, Vol. 5, No. 8, Suppl., 236. 



