BOSTON TO WASHINGTON 117 



of scientific men in the various Government departments and 

 in the Smithsonian Institution, and also the presence of many 

 literary men, as representatives of the great Northern papers 

 or as permanent or temporary residents. Among my earliest 

 acquaintances were Dr. Elliott Coues, a man of brilliant tal- 

 ents, wide culture, and delightful personality, with whose ideas 

 I had much in common, and with whom I soon became inti- 

 mate. He was not only a practical but highly philosophical 

 biologist, and was equally interested with myself in psychical 

 research. I met many pleasant people at his house, where I 

 often spent my Sunday evenings. I found another equally 

 close friend in Professor F. Lester Ward, who divided his 

 enthusiasms and his work between botany and sociology, both 

 subjects which (as an amateur) interested myself. His writ- 

 ings on the latter subject are very numerous — his " Dynamic 

 Sociology," in two large volumes, being a masterpiece of 

 elaborate systematic study of almost every phase of social 

 science. A more readable and more suggestive work is his 

 " Psychic Factors of Civilization," published in 1893, and he 

 has since contributed numerous papers and addresses of great 

 value to periodicals or to the publications of scientific societies. 

 As soon as the earliest flowers appeared he took me long 

 Sunday walks in the wild country round Washington, our 

 first being, on February 13, through the stretches of virgin 

 forest called Woodley Park, now, I believe, a botanical and 

 zoological reserve, where many interesting plants were gath- 

 ered to send home — Goodyera, Epigcea repens, Care.v Platy- 

 phylla, and the curious leafless parasite called beech-drops, 

 allied to our orobanche. One curious bog-plant, Symplocarpas 

 fcetidus, was in flower, as was the pretty blue hepatica, also 

 found in Europe. February and March were, however, very 

 cold, and Washington was snow-covered and wintry, and so 

 our first really good spring botanizing was on March 2J, 

 when we went a rather long walk of about nine miles to High 

 Island, a locality for many rarities. Here we found several 

 pretty or curious spring flowers, the most interesting to me 

 being the strange little white-flowered umbelliferous plant, 

 Erigena bulbosa; but other peculiar American plants — Clay- 



