THE EVENING LYNCHNIS. 131 



In the neig-hborhood of Philadelphia are several of these ballast 

 lots, one of which the writer visited for a couple of hours one after- 

 noon last October. At that frosty season, most of the flowers had 

 already gone into winter quarters, but amid the tangle of sweet meli- 

 lot, hedge mustard and mugwort, which made extensive thickets over 

 the ground, my attention was attracted by the appearance here and 

 there of the sprawling, forking stems of a plant strange to me, but 

 marked with the characteristic swollen joints of the pink family. It 

 bore stout, urn-shaped seed-vessels, brown, hard and shiny when the 

 enveloping calyx had dropped from them, five -pointed about the rim of 

 the open mouth and each point two-toothed ; within was an abundance 

 of ripe seeds, curiously pitted. Some pods, not so old, were wrapped 

 in a sticky green calyx beautifully ribbed in green or purple; but dili- 

 gent search through the tangle failed to several more than a few blos- 

 soms. These were salver-formed, delicately set atop of the long 

 calyx tube, with five pure white petals, each notched at the apex and 

 appendaged at the base so as to form in the center of the corolla a 

 pretty little crown, or corona. This was about three p. m. 



Leaving the spot for a while and returning to it about half past 

 four, when the sun was nearing its setting, and the mists of evening 

 were rising, I was bewildered to find the unkempt waste transformed 

 into a very bower of beauty by the presence of hundreds of these 

 starry white flowers gleaming everywhere low-down amid the grass 

 and tangled stalks of the larger growth, and exhaling a faint but deli- 

 cious perfume. What had happened to the desert place in my absence 

 that it should have blossomed thus suddenly as the rose, was this: The 

 plant was the White Campion or Evening Lychnis {L. Vespcrtina) — 

 abounding in English fields and hedge rows, but not native to America, 

 where it is found wild only about such waste places as that ballast 

 heap. It is a night-bloomer, its flowers expanding at the approach of 

 darkness, and remaining open through the night to wither in the morn- 

 ing. They were consequently (with an occasional exception) hidden 

 in bed at the time of my arrival on the ground, but the advent of even- 

 ing had, as though by the wave of a magician's wand, brought them 

 quickly out while my back was turned. 



Philadelphia. 



Bulletin No. 6 of the N. C. Geological Survey, on the Timber 

 Trees and Forests of North Carolina, by Gifford Pinchot and W. W. 

 Ashe, is a valuable contribution. It consists of 227 pages and 23 full 

 page plates of the more important trees, and contains much infor- 

 mation as to distribution, abundance, etc. It may be obtained by ap- 

 plication to the State Geologist, Chapel Hill, N. C, on payment of 

 the postage (10 cents). 



