THE PI. ANT WORLD 213 



them, paying from 1 cent to 30 cents for each plant, and selling the same 

 in Europe at prices ranging between $50 and $500 per plant — sometimes 

 even thousands of pounds sterling for a particularly scarce and long-sought 

 species. Like opals, these curious freaks of the floral kingdom seem to 

 have no set price, but are valued according to the passing craze of wealthy 

 collectors. There are other quintas in the vicinity of Bogota where fruits 

 and vegetables are raised for the markets of the capital ; and small farms, 

 green with wheat, corn, alfalfa, and clover. Nothing tells more truly of 

 the even temperature of the locality than the various stages of the corn 

 fields, proving that seed time and harvest are entirely in the hands of the 

 cultivator. One field is being plowed and planted ; another by its side 

 has a fine crop of full-grown corn on stalks higher than the head of a man 

 on horse-back ; while perhaps the next field shows the green blades just 

 shooting out of the ground. It is the same way with wheat. Here are 

 newly-sprouted fields, like emerald velvet ; close by are others in full 

 head. Some are being cut by women, with short sickles. In many places 

 the primitive threshing floor is in operation. — Fannie E. Ward in the 

 Philadelphia Record. 



THREE ECOLOGICAL PROBLEMS. 



How is it that the Taro i^Colocasia antiquorian, var. esculenta, Schott.), 

 which probably originated in Tropical America, has but one (or possibly 

 three) varieties in that region while it has about forty horticultural forms 

 in Hawaii and other Polynesian islands ? Is it because, being one of only 

 a few food plants in the latter region, it received much more attention 

 and was purposely or otherwise bred into numerous forms, while in its 

 old home, in the presence of superior rivals, it was neglected or at least 

 not highly appreciated ? 



How does it happen that the cocoanut, in all probability a native of 

 northern South America, as shown by Mr. O. F. Cook, has only two or 

 three varieties in the Western Hemisphere, while in the Orient, where it 

 is the sole representative of the large genus, the species is broken up into 

 upwards of thirty varieties and forms ? 



Why have the eight or ten cultivated kinds of Yautia or Tanier {Xan- 

 thosoma spp.) never left the land of their birth, the Caribbean region, 

 during the two hundred or three hundred years of their domestication, 

 notwithstanding the fact that they are propagated more readily than the 

 Taro and are also more easily grown, more prolific, and more delightfully 

 edible? O. W. Barrett. 



Mayagiiez, Porto Rico. 



