THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 107 



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the three elements, earth, water and air. Rooted in mud it 

 lifts a long stem bearing many capillary leaves through the 

 water to the air. Here the character of the leaves suddenly 

 changes and they become thick, lanceolate and merely toothed. 

 The main stem and its very few branches terminate in the typi- 

 cal blossom of bur marigold. The seventh edition of Gray's 

 Manual gives the range of Bidcns Bcckii as from Maine and 

 Quebec to New Jersey and westward. — Miss S. F. Sanborn, 

 Concord, N. H. 



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Cultivating Trailing Arrutus. — The trailing arbutus 

 (Epigaea repens) has a well deserved reputation for being 

 difficult to establish in cultivation. Although it is most abund- 

 ant in thousands of square miles of woodland and hilly pas- 

 ture, often thriving in the most inhospitable surroundings, it 

 has heretofore refused absolutely to grow when removed to 

 better quarters in the same general region. A legend has even 

 grown up about it to the effect that the Indian named it the 

 one plant which the white man could not tame. A few people, 

 it is true, have succeeded in domesticating it, and have taken 

 great credit to themselves for the accomplishment, but now 

 that the secret of growing it is out, their success is seen to have 

 been merely a lucky accident. When one knows how, the cul- 

 ture of this plant seems absurdly easy. This was discovered 

 a short time ago by F. V. Coville a government botanist. All 

 one has to do is to cultivate the plant in an acid soil. The ar- 

 butus, like the heaths in general, cannot endure lime in the soil 

 and just as soon as the soil loses its acid character begins to 

 fail. Poorly aerated soils are usually sour soils and this gives 

 the clue to the fondness of heaths for swamps and bogs. Var- 

 iou conditions unite to make some upland soils acid also, and 

 whenever, heaths are found away from the bogs they are to be 

 expected in such soils. Such success has attended Coville's 

 green house experiments that plants grown from seed have 



