4 JUNE IN FRANC ON I A. 



ing out some rarity sedges and willows 

 were the special desiderata which the pro- 

 fessional collectors seemed in danger of pass- 

 ing without notice. All in all, we were a 

 queer set. How the Latin and Greek poly- 

 syllables flew about the dining-room, as we 

 recounted our forenoon's or afternoon's dis- 

 coveries ! Somebody remarked once that the 

 waiters' heads appeared to be more or less 

 in danger; but if the waiters trembled at 

 all, it was probably not for their own heads, 

 but for ours. 1 



Our first excursion I speak of the four 

 who traveled on foot was to the Franconia 

 Notch. It could not well have been other- 

 wise ; at all events, there was one of the four 



1 Just how far the cause of science was advanced by 

 all this activity I am not prepared to say. The first orni- 

 thologist of the party published some time ago (in The 

 Auk, vol. v. p. 151) a list of our Franconia birds, and the 

 results of the botanists' researches among the willows 

 have appeared, in part at least, in different numbers of 

 the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club. As for the 

 lepidopterist, I have an indistinct recollection that she 

 once wrote to me of having made some highly interest- 

 ing discoveries among her Franconia collections, sev- 

 eral undescribed species, as well as I can now remember ; 

 but she added that it would be useless to go into particu- 

 lars with a correspondent entomologically so ignorant. 



