50 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



foot row of seeds from these same sprouts lay securely plant- 

 ed in m}' garden. 



That day I was honored by a visit from a noted engi- 

 neer of Teutonic extraction. The flowers drew his attention, 

 and he inquired what they were. 



Striking an attitude. I declaimed tliat these were none 

 other than the famous and fabulous blue dandelion! 



He snififed contemptously, and remarked that there was 

 a whole field of them near his home. Now, a prominent 

 society woman and flower-lover of Milwaukee liad recently 

 averred tJiat she had seen what she thought was the same 

 plant near Fox Point. So I was a bit chagrined. Then a 

 key-hole of escape loomed before me, as I remembered that 

 the whole field of supposed blue-dandelions in the Berk- 

 shires had turned out to be merely yellow, after all. 



So I hazarded: "But yours are yellow, aren't they?" 



"Oh, yes," he admitted, cheerfully enough, "but they 

 are the same plant exactly. I can tell it by the leafs. I can 

 tell it by the leafs." 



In vain I explained to him that the whole point to blue 

 dandelions was that they were blue. His card-catalog mind 

 had indexed them by the "leafs", and for him that was all 

 there was to it. 



But as to my more recent troubles. 



The general run of botanists either do not read the 

 Atlantic, or have jnit me down as a harmless lunatic, or re- 

 gard my story as an allegory. But not so one of their num- 

 ber. 



This redoubtable antagonist (by profession a creator 

 and purveyor of side-show freaks, and a botanist by avo- 

 cation. ) whipped his trenchant pen from its scabbard, and 

 proceeded to demolish me in the interests of the thousands of 



