TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING. 19 



Rectangular incisions -were made averaging one-third of an inch in width and 

 extending two inches lengthwise of the stem and of varying depth, some simply 

 extending through the outer bark, others slightly into the woody fiber, and others 

 to the heart of the stem. 



The cut surfaces were speedily healed in the ordinary way, leaving the rectangu- 

 lar opening, and the sap which formerly flowed through the severed tissues was 

 forced to find other channels. 



When the incision extended only through the outer walls of tissue, an enlarge- 

 ment occurred at the upper end of the wound, being immediately at the sides of the 

 cut, rather than above it, as would be the case if it were simply an enlargement re- 

 sultant upon the severing of tissues, while when the incision extended deeper into 

 the woody tissue this enlargement occurred at both the upper and the lower ends of 

 the incision. Dissection and examination showed a slight increase in the amount 

 of cellular tissue just surrounding the wound, as would be expected from the heal- 

 ing. Perhaps twenty plants were thus treated at the same time, always with the 

 same result. 



In other cases small splinters of wood, bits of wire and other foreign substances 

 were forced into the stalk, and in such cases these substances were enfolded by the 

 aggregation of a considerable amount of cellular tissue, or, in a manner, they would 

 be encysted. 



These few experiments, rude and incomplete from a strict scientific point of view, 

 and undertaken when I had not time to follow them up as carefully as I could have 

 wished, have yet yielded some curious results, and have suggested other experiments 

 which shall be made during the coming year. 



PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS UPON THE FLORA OF KANSAS. 



BY MRS. A. L. SLOSSON, LEAVENWORTH. 



The flora of Kansas has received considerable attention for some years, and many 

 lists more or less comprehensive have been published. None of these even in the 

 judgment of the compilers have been at all complete, and from the very necessities 

 of the case, being more or less local, were limited in their range, and untrue in some 

 of the general conclusions. 



The location of Kansas being central, its vegetation partakes of the North and 

 the South, of the fertile prairies of the East and the barren plains of the West; and 

 though it may lack the plants that require the mountains for their home, yet our va- 

 riety of soil gives us also a great variety of plants, and our long seasons and genial 

 climate promote their growth. Our flora, moreover, is rapidly changing from various 

 causes, among which are cultivation and the introduction of new plants, climatic 

 changes, freedom from prairie fires, and the increase of timber and hedges. 



It is a well-known fact that where the prairie sod is once destroyed it never reap- 

 pears, but an entirely new and different vegetation comes, which is nearly the same 

 in any given locality. An illustration of this that I never heard explained occurred 

 after the last grasshopper raid in northern Kansas. The grasshoppers ate the grass 

 to the roots in the fall, and in the spring kept it down until mid-summer, so that 

 where it was trodden at all, as in yards, by the roadsides, and such places, it was en- 

 tirely killed; even where it was blue-grass, that too shared the same fate; but late 

 the next season the soil was covered thickly with a soft, low, pale grass unlike any 

 that had ever been seen there before. The farmers called it "grasshopper grass," 



