ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. ‘47 
bluff near the original station at Paint Rock. J have 
noticed it, however, only a few meters at most away from 
the river or from some stream. ; | 
But what I regard as restricting the distribution of the 
plants fully as much as any of the above assigned causes 
is the heretofore unrecorded fact of their parasitism. 
Although Dr. Gray* dug up uckleya te remove it to 
Cambridge for the botanical garden at that place; and 
more recently Professor Sargent’ has carried both seed 
and young plants from Paint Rock to the Arnold Arbor- 
etum, where a few of the plants were induced to grow, it 
was not noticed by either that Backleya formed root- 
attachments to other plants. Great difficulty was en- 
countered in inducing the plants to grow, and what its 
not strange, all means of propagation failed. Mr. J. G. 
Jack writes me that one of the plants of Bauckleya which 
Dr. Gray took to Cambridge lived for a great many years 
beneath a hemlock where it was planted in the Botanic 
Garden and to the roots of which I think it had un- 
doubtedly formed attachments. 
I have been aware of the parasitic nature of these plants 
for several years. The parasitism of Darbya was first 
discovered, and subsequently that of Buckleya. In the 
autumn of 1894 Mr. F. E. Boynton and I collected speci- 
mens of Darbya near Salisbury, N. C., where I had pre- 
viously noticed the plants. He had already suggested 
the parasitism of Pyrularia, as recently published,’ and 
which I was soon after able to verify. We consequently 
suspected the parasitism of Darbya, knowing that many 
of the San/alaceae are root-parasites." 
4Gard; and Forest, 1.c. 
4Tbid. 
5Distribution from Biltmore Herbarium: /Pyrularta oletfera Mx, 
parasitic on roots of trees etc. 
6 dieronymus (Die Natuerlichen Pflanzenfamilien von Engler und 
Prantl, 203) gives only the following genera as being root-parasites: 
Osyris, Santalum, Commandra, Thesium, Arjona, and Quinchamalium, 
