496 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



to Bear Lake, Mackenzie & British Columbia, south to Maine, 

 Vermont, central and western New York, and Utah. The Scandi- 

 navian material examined lias been referred to the true C. aquatilis by 

 Andersson, Fries, Laestadius, and Wickstrom, and it agrees well with 

 Lauge's representation of the plant in Flora Danica, Supplement, t. 33. 

 This is the plant of broadest range in America. Many extreme varia- 

 tions have been described by European authors. The identity of these 

 is too often obscure, but some of the forms recognized by Mr. Arthur 

 Bennett in Great Britain (Jour. But. xxxv. 248) are found to occur 

 also in America. As extreme variations these plants may well be dis- 

 tinguished, though many transitional specimens occur which render 

 their ready separation difficult. The best marked forms are the 

 following: 



Var. elatior, Bab. Man. Brit. Bot. 341 ; Bennett, 1. c. 249. — Ro- 

 bust, 0.9 to 1.5 m. high: leaves 5 to 8 mm. broad: pistillate spikelets 

 stout and heavy, 3.5 to 8 cm. long, 5 to 8 mm. thick : scales dark, blunt 

 or acuminate, about equalling or slightly exceeding the perigynia. — 

 Maine, Fort Fairfield and Orono (M. L. Fernald, nos. 136, in part, 

 395) : New York, Pen Yan & Junius (Sartwell) ; -Dexter (G. Vasey) ; 

 Jefferson Co. (Crawe)', Niagara Falls ( W. Boott): Ohio (Sullivant): 

 Michigan, Pecke Isle, Detroit River ( C. F. Wheeler) : Manitoba, 

 English River (Sir John Richardson). 1 I have been unable to see 

 authentic specimens of Babington's plant, but from his description and 

 the note of Mr. Bennett, it seems probable that our large form should 

 be referred there. The material from Orono (where the once abundant 

 plant has been exterminated by the ''improvement" of the meadow) 

 has been described as a hybrid, C. aquatilis X stricta, Bailey, Bot. Gaz. 

 xvii. 153; but there was little besides the local occurrence of the plant 

 to suggest hybrid origin. The same very large form is shown in Crawe's 

 New York material, as well as in Richardson's English River plant, and 

 it is closely matched by Boott's plate 542, drawn from New York 

 specimens. 



1 Richardson's plant probably came from the river rising in Lake Sal and 

 flowing into Lake Winnipeg from the southeast. The name English Hirer has 

 been applied to a district between the Saskatchewan and Athabasca Lake, and it 

 was long used for the upper portion of Churchill River (emptying into Hudson 

 Bay). This larger northern river, however, was consistently spoken of by Rich- 

 ardson in his Arctic Searching Expedition (1852), p. 62, &c, as Missinippi or 

 Churchill River, while to the more southern river flowing from Lake Sal he ap- 

 plied the name English River (p. 362). 



