276 THE PLANT WORLD 



Briefer Articles. 



RIVER BOTANIZING. 



Some of our most beautiful wild flowers are best seen by a canoe-sail 

 up a small inland river. Such creeks and rivers, unknown to any but 

 local fame, abound in Rhode Island. At Providence alone, besides the 

 navigable Seekonk (above Pawtucket, known as the Blackstone), we have 

 the Pawtuxet, the Woonasquatucket, the Pokasset, the Mooshassuck, 

 and the Ten Mile. The latter is bewitchingly lovely and is a favorite 

 resort of canoeists. On it is the fine cascade at Hunt's Mills in East 

 Providence. This little river has its source near Attleboro, Mass., and 

 finally debouches into the Seekonk, opposite Providence, at Philipsdale. 

 If one enters it below Hunt's Mills he must " carry " around the obstruc- 

 tion at that point. 



The other day, with one of my academic colleagues, botanical but 

 not a professed botanist, I took a canoe at Central Pond, well above the 

 fall, and was paddled by him and a comrade up the stream about a mile 

 and a half. The course was very tortuous and meandering, with many 

 surprises in its intricate tarns. In fact, I, who was unfamiliar with the 

 river, was often quite at a loss to guess our advance. 



A thick fringe of alders, button-ball now ruddy in fruit, various 

 silvery willows, cornels, viburnums, and other shrubbery fringed the 

 shores. Again, in places, the forest trees came down to the very banks, 

 the swamp white oak, iron-woods, birches, beeches, maples and chest- 

 nuts. We turned into one little cove that was positively aglow with car- 

 dinal flowers, their gorgeous scarlet equally brilliant in the mirror of the 

 water. About these hummed multitudinous small Hymenoptera and 

 Diptera. 



The copses were tangled with masses of wiry dodder in full bloom, 

 while here and there a wreath of clematis was flung over a bush. We 

 passed tall platoons of joe-pye weed (^Eupatormm purpureum) , lesser 

 squads of thorough-wort (^E. per/oliatuni), and videttes of turtle-head 

 {.Chelone glabra). The turks-cap lily was still in bloom — brilliant cande- 

 labra afar in the meadows. An occasional branch of red maple, fully 

 colored, heralded the coming of September. In the water itself we 

 passed through vales of sweet-flag and sedge, among which grew the 

 ever-picturesque pickerel-weed {,Pontaderia cordata^. Big yellow buttons 

 of spatter-dock were not uncommon, and there were Potamogetons and 

 other aquatic plants galore. 



