108 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



len-ion-3'ellow flowers is found nowhere else in the whole world 

 and is valued accordingly by the plant collector. It is only 

 occasionally found and seldom in great abundance. The curly 

 grass is another plant worth more than passing notice from 

 the fact that it is the smallest fern in eastern America. A 

 fair sized plant roots and all, may be covered by laying a sin- 

 gle finger upon it. Its leaves are like very slender blades of 

 grass, coiled corkscrew-fashion and one must get down on 

 hands and knees to find it. New Jersey is the only state in 

 which it grows. These bogs are regarded as paradises by 

 the botanist and in their season furnish a wealth of orchids 

 and other rare plants not to mention commoner things which 

 attract the plant lover. 



If one consults a map of this region, he will find many 

 places marked upon it which fail to materialize when search 

 is made for them. It usually turns out that they are the sites 

 of iron furnaces which were once employed in extracting iron 

 from the bog ores. With the diminution of the ore supply 

 the furnaces were gradually abandoned until all that now 

 remains of many are crumbling walls and decaying timbers 

 about the hollows where dwellings once stood. A few small 

 hamlets have managed to exist after the fires in their furnaces 

 died out, but the greater number are deep in decay, tenanted 

 only by the lizard who delights to bask in the sunlight upon 

 their fallen walls. — Nezv York Tribune. 



THE GREAT PRIMEVAL FOREST 



THE great primeval forest, which is perhaps represented on 

 a more impressive scale than anywhere else in South 

 America, is the same that was described by the brothers 

 Schomburgh in 1848 and 1850. We traveled up the middle 

 course of the Essequibo river for seventy miles without finding 

 a solitary clearing ; not a single break in all the forest except 

 v/here tributary streams flowed into our own. On both banks 



