220 THE NATURALIST OF THE ST. CROIX 



of the Chewink, with reddish-brown spots, no green or 

 bluish color about them. What are they? Does the 

 Fish Crow lay such an egg ? ' ' Mr. Boardman answers 

 by saying : ' ' The crows' eggs were marked very oddly 

 but I have seen crows' eggs of most all colors, nearly 

 white and also quite brown." 



Dr. Wood was a delegate to the Vermont State Medical 

 Society at Brattleboro in July, 1868, and on his return in 

 the train he saw a good looking man reading the American 

 Naturalist. He writes Mr. Boardman : ' ' On the strength 

 of that I ventured to ask him if he was a naturalist. 

 He replied that he was fond of botany and that he had 

 now been up into Vermont to collect a very rare plant 

 which was only found on an island in the Connecticut 

 river in the northern part of the state. I found he had 

 travelled all over this continent as well as on the Atlantic 

 and Pacific Coasts. After considerable yankeeing I 

 found out that he was Prof. Alphonso Wood, author of 

 Wood's Botany. We had quite a lively time after we 

 found out each other's names and that we were distantly 

 related." In a subsequent letter, under date of October 

 9, 1868, Dr. Wood gives the conclusion of this interest- 

 ing incident : 



I sent Prof. Wood, author of Wood's Botany, a box of 

 botanical specimens last week. We have a plant, Lygodium 

 palmatuin, the climbing fern, which is very abundant here but is 

 not to be found anywhere else on the globe in any quantity. 

 There is one place in Massachusetts where a little can be found. 

 It is one of the rarest plants in the world. I was telling Prof. 

 Wood of the abundance of it here, last summer, and he was 

 anxious to have me send him not only some pressed specimens 

 but some roots. He intends to transplant it. I sent him over 

 fifty good roots and some twenty-five pressed specimens. Prof. 



