BOTANICAL, GAZETTE. 



243 



two bodies, however, start separately and are several inches 

 apart for nearly ten feet, when they unite and form a single 

 straight trunk, making, in all a tree nearly seventy feet high. 

 The two trunks, where they are separate, are about six inches in 

 diameter, round, straight, and appear to be solid and perfect. 



5. Blighted Hickory -nuts —During the winter of 1881-2, I 

 found a number of what I take to be blighted hickory-nuts. 

 Besides those that I found several were brought to me as matters 

 of curiosity, and all were similarly deformed. The accompany, 

 ing sketch will probably help to convey the 

 best idea of them. The central part (a) is 

 hard and solid and is imbeded in a cavity 

 which is just large enough to contain it. It 

 is everywhere free, except at the lower end, 

 from which it appears to have grown. I take 

 it to be the kernel lignified. The endocarp 

 (b) is-thicker than usual, solid, and very hard. 

 The nut appears to be the proper length, but 

 too slender. All the examples I saw I took 

 to be fruit of C. sulcata. While I have 

 cracked a goodly number of hickorynuts every 

 winter for nearly thirty years, this was the 

 only season in which I noticed this deformity. 

 May it not be that the long drought during 

 the previous summer, which continued from the last weeks in 

 June to the first of September, was the cause of this growth ? 



'6. A Butternut imbedded in the solid wood of an ash tree. — 

 While waiting in che office of my friend, Dr. A. J. Mcintosh, I 

 was shown a piece of ash wood in which was firmly imbedded a 

 veritable butternut. The wood that had formed around it ap- 

 peared to be healthy and firm when cut. The exocarp was gone, 

 but the wood in its growth had fitted itself into the interstices of 

 the endocarp. The Doctor, who is a Jacksonian Democrat, ex- 

 plains it in this wise : During war times one of the "butternuts" 

 was so closely pursued by a l( home guard " that he took the first 

 hole he could find, and this happened to be a wood-pecker's hole 

 in an ash tree. 



7 Double Tulips — Several years since I was invited by a lady 

 friend to call and see some double tulips. Before starting, I 

 stated that I did not think they could be doubled more than one 

 and one-half times, thinking that the six stamens and three pis- 

 tils had been developed into petal-like organs. But to my sur- 

 prise I found the tulips as double as any rose. I was at a loss to 



