106 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



trates the shells of eggs. In the laboratory many stains and 

 other reagents are attacked, among which may be mentioned 

 solutions of acetic acid, glycerine and eosin. 



Valuable Trees. — The wayside trees were once con- 

 sidered of no especial value and to be hacked and crippled by 

 the general public at will. Horses gnawed them, telegraph 

 and telephone linemen butchered them, patent medicine sellers 

 used them for bill boards and everybody else misused them 

 whenever it came handy. But times have changed and con- 

 servation is coming to be applied to even street trees. According 

 to Gardening the borough of Conshohocken, Pa., chopped 

 down twenty-six maple trees belonging to William Hallowell 

 in order to widen a street whereupon the owner brought suit 

 and was awarded $4,860 damages. Laws in each state differ 

 somewhat as regards the amount one can recover for trees in- 

 jured but it is safe to say that a few cases like the above wilt 

 make the citizens in some parts of the world begin to take no- 

 tice. 



BiDENS Beckii. — At the head of North Main street, in Con- 

 cord, N. H., there is a pond in an old river bed called from its 

 shape horseshoe pond. To me the flora is exceedingly inter- 

 esting. It includes much pickerel weed, the fragrant white 

 pond lily, the spatter dock {Nitphar advcna), Nais Hexilis for 

 which Gray gives us no credit, a species of chara, probably 

 foetida, the floating heart, different species of Potamogeton 

 and the common bladderwort ( Utriailaria vulgaris var. Ameri- 

 cana). But perhaps the rarest find is the water mangold 

 (Bidens Beckii). In looking over the mass of vegetation 

 washed up in autumn along the edges of the pond I have 

 found for several years a section of a plant with divided leaves 

 resembling those of some species of bladderwort without the 

 bladders. The identity of the plant was a problem most an- 

 noying until some sharp-eyed observer found the water mari- 

 gold in flower. This curious bidens manages to adapt itself to 



