154 MY LIFE [Chap. 



and to the Wittanann Hotel, where Colonel and Mrs. Phillips 

 lived when in the country. On an elevation, called Iron Hill, 

 Colonel Phillips was going to build a house, which would 

 have a rather extensive view. The hill was covered with 

 yuccas, and with the elegant tradescantia with blue or pink 

 flowers in great abundance. I also found the fine dwarf 

 Baptisia and Penstemon cobcea. As I required a lantern for 

 my lecture, we called first on a Mr. Seitz, a druggist, who 

 sent us to the Masonic Hall, but in vain. Then we tried the 

 Wesleyan College and the Normal University, but both were 

 recently established, and not the possessors of a lantern. At 

 length we found one at a Mr. Chapman's, but it was an 

 ordinary magic-lantern, suitable for a disc about four feet 

 diameter, and with a common oil-lamp, giving a poor light. 

 When the lecture was given, to add to my difficulties the 

 lamp went out in the middle, and I had to go on talking till 

 it was set right. There were only about a hundred people, 

 so that there were none very far off, and they seemed fairly 

 well satisfied. 



One day we drove over to call on an old French farmer, 

 M. Joseph Henry, who was a botanist and a student of mosses 

 and grasses. He was out, but his wife showed us a little heap 

 of stones near the house, in which, on the north side, he had 

 a few very small mosses growing, one of them a new species 

 he had discovered, named after him, Barbula Henrici. It was 

 a shabby, rickety wooden farmhouse, with a few sheds in the 

 usual style of small prairie farmers. Going back we met the 

 owner returning home, and stayed a few minutes to talk. 

 He had been in the country twenty years but could only 

 speak very broken English, and when he found we could not 

 speak any better French, he was quite indignant that a 

 scientific man could not speak in his beautiful language — the 

 language of the civilized world ! He made me feel quite 

 small. However, he managed to tell us that the American 

 botanists did not know their own country. "They all say 

 there are no mosses in Kansas. But / have found mosses ! 

 I have found new species of mosses ! And when I send them 

 my discoveries they will not give me the names — they will 



