A HANDSOME THISTLE. 147 



By the side of the railway I find a second specimen 

 of the thistle, Carduus horridulus Pursh. It belies 

 its name, for it is a most handsome plant. Its stem, 

 has, in the past, been cut off about two feet above 

 the ground. From just below the cut a dozen or more 

 flower stalks have grown upward for eighteen inches 

 in umbel-like fashion. Each of these stalks bears a 

 single large flower or bud. The flowers are two 

 inches or more across when fully expanded. Each is 

 sub-tended by a double circle of long, slender bracts, 

 which curve upward and form an urn-like involucre 

 in which the blossom rests. These bracts bear a dou- 

 ble row of purple spines along their margins and each 

 is tipped with a similarly colored long and slender 

 spine. The uppermost leaves are opposite, bract-like, 

 and also armed on the margins with handsome purple 

 spines. The flower itself is a charming rose purple in 

 hue. 'Tis handsome enough to grace a queen's table, 

 yet it blooms here in the gutter by the railway, un- 

 noticed and unknown. Why should not such a plant 

 be tended in a hothouse, given a high sounding name, 

 and sold for a fabulous sum? Were it not for its 

 prickly armor such might be its fortune. 



On one of its blossoms I find a single specimen of 

 a pretty Chrysomelid beetle, Lema ephippiata Lac., 

 one-third of an inch in length, red except the elytra, 

 which are steel blue; and the antennae and tibiae,, 

 which are dark brown. The blossoms also bear two 

 specimens of a grayish-brown hemipteron, Margus 



