BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 79 



wet. Mr. Meelian suggests that by taking sections at different 

 places in the same log we would find the same layer bearing all 

 kinds of testimony. The writer has heard classes gravely informed 

 that the above was the fact, and also that the rings of growth found 

 in fossil trees necessarily indicated seasons of cold and warmth. In 

 the last instance a bright boy rather nonplussed the teacher by ask- 

 ing if there were no exogenous trees in the tropics. 



Peof. F. C. Phillips, of Western University, Penn., has been 

 experimenting upon the effects produced upon plants by being 

 grown in soil impregnated with certain metallic oxides. His con- 

 clusions are as follows: . . 



1. That healthy plants, grown under favorable conditions, may 

 absorb through their roots small quantities of lead, zinc, copper 

 and arsenic. 



2. That lead and zinc may enter the tissues m this way without 

 causing any disturbance in the growth, nutrition and functions o± 



the plant. 



3. That the compounds of copper and arsenic exert a distinctly 

 poisonous influence, tending, when present in larger quantity, to 

 check the formation of roots, and either killing the plant or so far 

 reducing its vitality as to interfere with nutrition and growth. 



New Stations for Rare Plants— 1. Botrychium matricariwfo- 

 Uum, Al. Br. About June 10 of last summer, in company with 

 Prof. Joseph Milliken of Columbus, 0., I made an excursion for 

 plants in the vicinity of this city. In a thicket on a northern slope, 

 we found a specimen of this little fern. Going down on our hands 

 and knees and making a thorough search, we finally counted eighty- 

 four (84) specimens growing on an area of three or four 

 'square rods. This plant grows quite abundantly in eastern New 

 York and in New England. But I have never before known it to 

 be found west of the Alleghanies and south of Lake Superi-.-r. I 

 have no doubt, though, that it grows on many a damp shady hill- 

 side with a northern exposure, in the states of Indiana, Kentucky 

 and Ohio. It should be looked for during the month of June. 



2. Veratrum Woodii, Bobbins. This plant grows im the 

 woods about" Dayton, 0. My attention was first called to it by 

 finding it transplanted from the woods to a neighbor's door-yard. 

 The plants were very few and far between, however, till I found 

 quite a patch of it near Ludlow Falls, 17 miles above Dayton, on the 

 banks of the Stillwater river. In one spot I counted fifteen (15) 

 plants ; the trouble was however that only four or five of them 

 threw up flower stalks, so that I did not get many specimens.— A- 

 P. Morgan", Cincinnati. 



Eve,; the curious Aster adnatus is already in bud. Two things im- 

 press me as distinctive of the scenery and of the woodlands b re. 



