

130 The Botanical Gazette. t Ma y- 



I have come across this form of the plant, having previously 

 seen it under similar conditions of growth at Escanaba, Mich. 

 Upham gives Minneapolis as another station for it in the 

 state. Its range in Gray's Manual is given as "shore of Lake 

 Ontario, and northward." As the Manual is for the United 

 States I suppose this means the southern shore. Macoun 

 gives it for the Canadian shore, and "the gravelly banks of 

 rivers to lat. 69° (Richardson.)" The Michigan and Minne- 

 sota plants are interesting as extending the geographical 

 range farther up the Great Lakes and into the region of the 

 Upper Mississippi. The plant evidently conforms to the var. 

 intermedins in the Manual. The conditions of growth may 

 have something to do with the erect or semi-erect habit of the 

 stems. In both cases where found these were carefully noted 

 and compared with those of var. rcptans, the common form. 

 I have always found the latter in open places, in sand or 

 gravel quite bare of other vegetation, or with plants low or 

 creeping like itself, and not shading it. In the var. inter- 

 medins the plants grew among scattered spears of grass and 

 rushes, considerably overtopping and shading them. It could 

 not easily lie on the ground and root at the joints, though 

 there is sometimes a tendency to this in the lowest joint or 

 two. The erect or ascending stems — the latter the more com- 

 mon position — are so slender that they could hardly support 

 themselves if deprived of the shelter and protection of the 

 surrounding plants, and forced into the conditions of the 

 creeping stemmed variety. They often lean against these 

 plants as if too weak to stand alone, and are apparently 

 struggling upward toward the light. 

 Englewood, Chicago. 



A visit to the West Indies. 



A. S. HITCHCOCK. 



The readers of the Gazette may be interested in a few of 

 the observations made during a recent trip to the West Indies. 



The expedition was organized and conducted by Dr. J. T. 

 Rothrock, of the University of Pennsylvania, in whose yacht, 

 the White Cap, we lived during our absence from the United 

 States. We started from Fernandina, Florida, Nov. 4th, 



