ELUCIDATION SOLICITED. 



A lady amateur scrutinize! of genesis affairs, has 

 asked me if I would be willing to give the initial 

 particulars of my first sight of that " Phanerogyne," 

 in Astoria, in 1840. I have replied in the affirmative 

 that I would do it with a vivid pleasure, for it will 

 give me a regain of those celestial sensations I have 

 experienced in that providential circumstance. Even 

 to-day, the mere souvenir of it makes me feel as if my 

 heart was melting in a sea of voluptuousness ! 



The first glimpse I had of that cryptogamous speci- 

 men of vegetation, was through (rather a dim light) the 

 front sashes of a greenhouse. She, as now, I know 

 the sex which I did not then, whether it was dioecious, 

 hermaphrodite, or unisexual. She was walking in the 

 carriage road of the site we were on, looking on each 

 side, in the borders, to see the flowers. She seemed to 

 be afraid of what I could not tell ; I found it after. 

 It was that "Albany Dutchman " that had been de- 

 picted to her as a good intelh'gent fellow enough, but, 



