X 
16 BOTANY OF 
Mr. R. assured me he dared not handle or even venture to remain 
standing near for any time; nor were his people willing to undertake 
the task of clearing it away from the trees, on which it is certainly a 
graceful climber, so great was their dread of its exhalations. Tall 
Red-Top (Tricuspis seslerioides) was common on the lawns here and in 
other places in the neighbourhood ; a coarse grass growing in tufts, 
with much the appearance of a Poa (Glyceria Sclerochloa) in its inflo- 
rescence, but with the habit of a broad-leaved Festuca. This night 
and the following morning (25th) were quite fresh and even chilly at 
Mount Peace, the wind at north-east, which, as is usual here, was the 
precursor of damp, gloomy, and relaxing weather, with hardly any sun 
during the next four days, when it cleared, and the two last of the 
month were fine. The humidity of the air at Philadelphia, lying as 
the town does betwixt two rivers whose banks are at that part low 
and marshy, creates languor and oppression in those who come here in 
summer, and has acquired for it the unenviable reputation of being at 
that season one of the hottest and closest places in the Union. The 
truth is, that here, as over the greater part of the United States, the 
southern ones not always excepted, the houses are as ill adapted for 
coolness during the intense heats of the American summer as those of 
London or any other town in England, being, like them, mostly run up 
slightly, and therefore soon heated through, whilst they possess only 
the same appliances as our own, of open doors and windows, Venetian 
blinds, and shutters, and in the hotels, which are perfect ovens from 
this cause, not always are these two last and cheap appendages to the 
windows to be found. The substitution of white-wash, or of painted 
and varnished stucco or stencilling on the walls, in lieu of papering, 
which is scarcely to be seen anywhere in that country, is doubtless con- 
ducive to coolness, but with no provision made for excluding the sun 
beyond perhaps a flimsy dimity curtain, the evil is only increased by 
the intolerable glare from the unbroken mass of white which the inte- 
rior of every room presents, and which in winter has an equally forlorn 
and comfortless appearance to those accustomed to the warmer colour- 
ing and often gay patterns on our "poss walls in SM: * Most 
in France, are used as sitting apartments, and 
ed the nem Leer of the entranee-hall, or of the“ 
