I 889«] BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



II 



Mills, in Jefferson county, New York, where the party was 

 fitted out, we passed through the little town of Carthage, and 

 before having fairly left the town I espied from the wagon an 

 unfamiliar weed growing by the roadside. Leaping from 

 the wagon, as I had done a hundred times before, and 

 plunging my garden trowel under it 1 brought it up with a 

 clod of earth which 1 shook off as I ran on and regained tht 

 wagon. I immediately recognized it as an Hieracium, but 

 quite distinct from any of our native species, with all of which 

 I thought I was familiar. The first glance made me ver\ 

 desirous of obtaining more, but a down grade with good 

 road started the horses on a fast trot and I "saw two or three 

 specimens go by before I was able to obtain another without 

 begging the driver to stop for the purpose and seeing him 

 stare impatiently at me, as he, at least internally, cursed me 

 as an incorrigible " crank." At length our speed slackened 

 and I succeeded in obtaining one more specimen in the same 

 manner as before. 



I examined the specimens carefully, shaking mv head as 

 I placed them in my swollen portfolio, and resolved, that, if 

 possible during my stay in that section, I would obtain more 

 of the plant. Accordingly, on the following day. I gladly 

 accepted the invitation of Mr. Jerry Walrath, since deceased, 

 who was with our party, and a very pleasant gentleman, to 

 take me a long ride around the country in the vicinity of 

 Evans' Mills, which is chietly noted as the site of the settle- 

 ment on Pleasant creek, some three miles above that place, 

 of the early French Le Ray family, the heirs of which pre- 

 serve the estate almost like a park. I was, I confess, think- 

 ing all that day, which I remember with much pleasure, more 

 of my new hawk weed, which I believed to be a modern im- 

 migrant from the continent, than I was of the more ancient 

 immigrants about whom my friend so intelligently discoursed. 

 At every fence corner and in every lane I scanned the ground, 

 hoping to see it, until, as Thoreau says, the earnest searcher 

 after a particular plant, the image of which has long been in 

 his mind, will eventually do, I at last espied it, not, however* 

 in isolated individuals growing by the barren roadside, but 

 in a large colonv, growing compactly together, the radical 

 leaves in prostrate rosettes, forming an almost unbroken mat 

 upon the ground along both sides of a fence that bordered a 

 plowed field. Trie area was restricted, it is true, to a few 

 rods in length, and to one side of the road, but it looked as 

 if, prior to the last plowing of the field adjoining, it might have 



