THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 101 



Again, throughout Greater Boston, say in Cambridge, 

 Jamaica Plain, Roxbury and Dorchester, the morning hours of 

 summer are made gay with the splendid blue heads of chickory. 

 It is characteristic of the region. Yet forty miles away, in 

 Rhode Island, this vigorous plant is very local and when found 

 is rarely in any quantity, 



Echium vulgare, as far back as my early botanizing, pre- 

 vailed as it still does, in vast abundance about the Fall River 

 railroad tracks and the Wilkesbarre coal wharfs in East Provi- 

 dence. In any other part of Rhode Island and adjacent Mas- 

 sachusetts, it is rare. Yet, so far as we can see, there is no 

 reason why it should not spread along the railway at least to 

 Riverside. All we know is that it doesn't. A furtive plant 

 may now and then be seen there, and once I found a little patch 

 of it, but this weed which is a curse, I am told, on Staten Is- 

 land and elsewhere in the Middle States, is with the exception 

 recorded above, a rarity. 



The parsley family, Umbelli ferae, shows some queer tricks 

 of distribution. In all Rhode Island, even to Block Island the 

 wild carrot or Queen Anne's lace is the prevailing weed, a 

 lovely nuisance, everywhere. About Mt. Wachusett it is almost 

 entirely replaced by caraway. Then if one extends his journey 

 to Lebanon Springs, N. Y., he sees neither of these plants but 

 in their place the common parsnip. Every place seems to call 

 for an umbellifer in quantity, but each place as a rule exhibits 

 a dififerent one. There is something curious in these facts if 

 philosophy could find them out. Somewhat similar facts are 

 shown with the mints, Labiatae. In one place, as on Mt. 

 Wachusetts catnip almost solely prevails ; in another it is re- 

 placed by motherwort. Both are foreign importations. 



These matters have long been in my mind but as yet I can 

 offer no explanation of the phenomena. 



Providence, R. I. 



