302 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 



perience with Finns rigida and P. pungens ; and it is doubtless true of other 

 species. 



I have noted some interesting: variations in Pinus Banltsiama, vehich in some 

 way do seem to be connected with location, although I have no doubt that 

 ages of geographical travel from a central jioint conjoined with the principle of 

 inheritance, might find the natural inherent laws of variation sufficient to 

 account for them. Dr. Gray says, in the last edition of his Manual of Botany, 

 it is a shrub or low tree 5 to 20 feet high, giving N. Maine, N. Michigan and 

 Wisconsin, and northward as the localities. I did not collect in northern 

 Illinois, but friends tell me it grows some thirty miles from Chicago, only as 

 a bush. Michaux observes that in Labrador it shows signs of decrepid old age 

 at 3 feet, and in no part of America did he find it over 10 feet. Dr. Richardson, 

 in Franklin's narrative of a joarney to the shores of the Polar Seas in 1819 — 

 1822, describes it as 40 feet high in favorable situations, but the diameter of 

 its trunk was greater in proportion to its height than in any other pines of the 

 country. Douglass found it to have longer leaves on the Rocky Mountains 

 than elsewhere. In company with Mr. Wm. Canby, I had the opportunity of 

 examining large forests of them growing on the neck of land between Escan- 

 auba, on Lake Michigan, and Marc|uette, on Lake Superior, where we found 

 them just the reverse of Dr. Richardson's experience. Here they were more 

 slender in proportion to their height, not only than any pine of the country, but 

 probably than any pine elsewhere. Most of the trees were from 30 to 40 feet 

 high, remarkably straight, but only from 6 to 12 inches in diameter. We 

 roughly measured one at Escanauba which was about twenty inches in diame- 

 ter, and perhaps sixty feet high, little shorter than in fact a very fine Pinus 

 resirwsa, about two and a half feet through, growing near it. 



Now these variations have relation to only one particular, that of size ; there 

 would no doubt be found others in many respects ; but even in this one 

 character no theory of climate or soil will account for them. If a low tem- 

 perature dwarfs the Labrador specimens, what is to account for the small 

 bushes in Illinois or southern Wisconsin, in lat. 42°? And again, why are 

 these latter in the rich soils of this district so small in comparison with the 

 almost timber trees of a few hundred miles farther north, and in which is 

 usually considered the poorest land of the north-west ? Soil and climate may 

 have some influence in aiding variation, but facts show the origin is deeper 

 than these, namely, a native power to change, kept in check only by inheri- 

 tance and perhaps external circumstances. 



I have heretofore reported Pinus pungens as growing at Port Clinton ; I find 

 it now abundantly on the hills about Harrisburg ; so it may be set down as 

 native to the whole interior of the Stale of Pennsylvania. 



Nov. U, 1868. 



The President, Dr. Hays, in the Chair. 



Forty-two members present. 



The following paper was presented for publication : 

 Sixth Contribution to the Heri^etologyof Tropical America. By 

 Edw. D. Cope. 



Dr. Leidy called attention to two singular specimens presented this evening 

 by Mr. Lamborn.. They were obtained from the Huronian slates near the 

 Dalles of St. Louis lliver, northern Minnesota. They bear a strong likeness to 

 large coprolites partially imbedded in portions of slate. They not only have 

 the usual form of coprolites, though flattened, but have an apparent spiral 

 arrangement. Taken from the surface slate, the bodies, where exposed to the 

 air have been more readily decomposed than the slate. A broken surface ex- 



[Nov. 



