THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 37 



up two numbers in one and thinks he has the hang of the busi- 

 ness well enough to issue a few more after the same pattern. 

 The only thing- that gets on his nerves is for new subscribers 

 to insist on having the January and March numbers of the 

 magazine. He thinks they ought to know by this time that 

 "there ain't no such animal." 



* * * 



The world has produced a number of individuals who 

 have attempted to confer lasting benefits on posterity and made 

 a muddle of it, but the one we nominate for the principal prize 

 in such matters is the misguided individual mentioned in a 

 recent number of Torreya, who goes about the country adul- 

 terating the flora with European material to the consequent 

 confusion of all industrious plant geographers. Torreya, quot- 

 ing from the New York Times, says of our hero that "ever 

 since he was a boy he has delighted in transplanting the seeds 

 of wildflowers and plants and trees, so that the growths indi- 

 genous to one section should find a home in another. He for- 

 merly took American seeds to European countries and planted 

 them there, returning to this country with seeds from foreign 

 lands which he planted in this country. In the Eagle Rock 

 Park west of Montclair he has planted many foreign seeds, but 

 most of his planting has been clone in the woods of New York, 

 New Jersey and New England. He usually goes on his walk- 

 ing trips carrying bags of seeds in his pockets. The seeds he 

 tosses broadcast as he walks along. On his frequent railroad 

 trips he carries seed from some foreign country in small pack- 

 ages wrapped in tissue paper. These packages, weighted with 

 stones, he tosses from the train windows into the woods bor- 

 dering the tracks." Hereafter when old Professor Dryasdust 

 finds a new plant along the Atlantic seaboard, he will never be 

 certain whether to write a long paper about the new discovery 

 for the Botanical Society of America or to pull up and destroy 

 the plant as a vile interloper. If we believed in reincarnation. 



