BOTANICAL EXCURSION TO NORTH CAROLINA. 389 
pose. With considerable difficulty we at length procured a 
earry-all (a light, covered wagon with springs, drawn by a 
single horse), capable of conveying our luggage and a single 
person besides the driver, a simple shoemaker who had never 
before undertaken so formidable a journey, and who accord- 
ingly proved entirely wanting in the skill and tact necessary 
for conducting so frail a vehicle over such difficult mountain 
tracks, for roads they can scarcely be called. We had first 
to ascend the steep ridge interposed between the middle and 
south Forks of the Holston, called Brushy Mountain, during 
the ascent of which we commenced botanizing in earnest. 
The first interesting plant we met with was Saxifraga erosa 
of Pursh, but only with ripe fruit, and even with the seeds 
for the most part fallen from the capsules. The same locality 
also furnished us with specimens of the pretty Zhalictrum 
filipes, Torr. & Gray (to which the name of 7. clavatum, 
DC. must be restored), a plant which abounds along all the 
cold and clear brooks throughout the mountains of North 
Carolina; where it could not well have escaped the notice of 
Michaux, in whose herbarium De Candolle found the speci- 
men (with no indication of its habitat) on which his 7. cla- 
vatum was established. The authors of the ‘“ Flora of North 
America,” having only an imperfect fruiting specimen of 
their 7. filipes, and not sufficiently remarking the discrep- 
ancies between the 7. clavatum, Hook. “ Fl. Bor.-Am.” and 
the figure and description of De Candolle’s plant, in regard 
to the length of the styles, assumed the former to be the true 
T. clavatum, and described their own plant as a new species. 
But our specimens accord so perfectly with the figure of 
Delessert (except in the greater but variable length of the 
stipes to the fruit, and in the veining of the carpels, which, 
doubtless by an oversight of the artist, is omitted in the fig- 
ure) as to leave no doubt of their identity. The subarctic 
plant may be appropriately called 7. Richardsonii, in honor 
of its discoverer. The flowers of this species are uniformly 
perfect, as indeed they are figured by Delessert, although 
De Candolle has otherwise described them. It is a slender, 
delicate plant, from eight to twelve, or rarely exceeding eigh- 
