THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 57 



still it makes it a valuable adjunct to the library of every one in- 

 terested in studying the flora of southeastern Pennsylvania, as 

 you doubtless know, without my telling you. But the feature 

 about it I have always liked, is the pleasant comment which 

 the old Doctor bestows upon the various plants, as he describes 

 them, giving to the work something of the quaintness and 

 flavor of Izaak Waltons' 'Complete Angler.' " 



We sometimes wonder, after the last new species has been 

 made and something like an agreement as to plant names has 

 been patched up, whether the time will not come again when 

 our prominent botanists may be attracted to the plants, as the 

 early botanists were, by their beauty, their perfumes and their 

 uses, and give us other books that are not mere compilations 

 of facts, but breathe something of the spirit of regard for the 

 flowers themselves which should animate every botanist 

 worthy of the name. 



A Mutating Rudbeckia, — Since reading of Dr. Beal's 

 collection of mutating Rudheckias in the American Botanist 

 for December, 1907, I found an unusual Rudbeckia Jiirta in an 

 old field. Each head had eight regular rays and at the base of 

 each ray was attached a cluster of shorter and narrower rays. 

 The abnormal rays were of different lengths, some more than 

 half as long as the normal ones. A few of them were broad and 

 deeply cleft. All the heads (three) on the plant had this pe- 

 culiarity. — Nell McMurray, Nezv Washington, Penn. 



[The head of Rudbeckia which Miss McMurray describes 

 illustrates the transformation of some of the tubular disk color- 

 las into rays. Examination shows that it is usually the mar- 

 ginal flowers of the disk that have thus changed, but in some 

 cases flowers two or three rows in from the margin have also 

 developed the rays. Their cleft shape is probably reminiscent 

 of the five-lobed structure of the normal tubular corolla. If 

 all the disk flowers should change in this way the result would 

 be a "double" head, and it is interesting to note that this has 

 been done with Rudbeckia laciniata, producing the cultivated 

 golden glow.] 



