6 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Feb, 



ofMayne Reid, Burton, the Times's Special, and Longfellow, 

 added to the common belief of prairie men, cannot be gainsay ed. 

 Yet a cautious botanist will suspect that after all, the concurrent 

 testimony may resolve itself into a snow-ball fancy, that has gath- 

 ered as it rolled from book to book, and that the popular authors 

 quoted did not trouble themselves much about the accuracy of the 

 fact. Prof. Asa Gray, our chief American botanist, does not con- 

 firm the exhibition of polarity by his observation of the plant in 

 the Cambridge garden. In the same way, I could not make it 

 out by observation of the plant for two years, although certainly 

 in the single plant to which my observations ^were limited the 

 stem-leaves did show a tendency towards a north and south direc- 

 tion. However in an " extra" from the American Journal of Sci- 

 ence, given to me when on a recent visit to Prof. Gray at Cam- 

 bridge, I find a communication from Mr. T. Hill, with observations 

 made on the wild plants near Chicago, — Aug. 8, 1863. Only one 

 plant, bearing four old leaves, gave an average angle with the 

 meridian of more than 34° ; their mean was 18° west. Of twenty- 

 nine plants, bearing ninety-one leaves, the angles with the meridian 

 were as follows : seven made angles greater than 35° ; fifteen, an- 

 gles between 35° and 20° ; sixteen, angles between 20° and 8° ; 

 twenty-eight, angles between 8° and 1°; and twenty-five, angles less 

 than 1°. Of the sixty-nine angles less than 20°, the mean is N. 0° 33^ 

 E., i. e. about half a degree east of the meridian. The error of ob- 

 servation may have been as much as three times this quantity. 

 One half of the leaves bear within about half a point of north^ 

 two-thirds within a point. In the Kingston specimen the first 

 flower looked to the north, the others chiefly south. 



10. BuxBAUMiA APHYLLA IN NovA ScoTiA. — This rare and 

 most remarkable of all the mosses grows on the hills three miles 

 in the rear of the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was found 

 with perfectly formed but green capsules on December 26, 1863, 



11. Parochetus communis. — A herbaceous leguminous plant, 

 new to gardens, and bearing the above name, was exhibited at 

 the November (1863) meeting of the Edinburgh Botanical Socie- 

 ty. It resembles the common white clover, but has blue flowers, 

 and is said to be very prefy. This plant was introduced to Ca- 

 nada last year, a fine crop having been raised from seeds received^, 

 from Dr. Thomas Anderson, who obtained them at a high eleva^ 

 tion on the Himalayas. 



