1889.] BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



*3 



tie, which was called the Cleveland meeting of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, was over, I re- 

 tired, begrimed and discomfited, to the classic banks of the 

 St. Lawrence, where the winds, though sometimes brisk, are 

 not laden with carbon, and where some members of my 

 household had gone before me. The night of my arrival I 

 heard through them that a botanist from Albany had recently 

 visited Evans' Mills and Carthage in search of a plant that 

 he said I had found there, that he had called on Mr. William 

 Comstock, an intimate friend of mine, and who had been the 

 life of the hunting party above alluded to, and questioned him 

 concerning it. I immediately had my suspicions as to what 

 plant it was, which were fully confirmed a few days later 

 when Mr. Comstock and his wife came from their home in 

 Evans' Mills and spent a day with us at the Central Park. I 

 learned from them that the gentleman's name was Peck, and 

 I at once knew that it could be none other than Prof. Charles 

 H. Peck, State Botanist of New York. Mr. Comstock re- 

 lated to me the interview with Mr. Peck as nearly as he 

 could remember it; that he was in search of a plant that I 

 had once collected at Evans' Mills and Carthage, that the 

 plant was a "hawkweed," etc. Mr. Comstock said he told 

 him that there was a hawkweed growing there on all the 

 farms which was a terrible pest to the country and had gained 

 the name of Devil-weed, King of Devils, or, more briefly, 

 the King-Devil, but that this could not be the rare plant he 

 was in search of, because it was so extremely abundant, and, 

 besides, it flowered in June, and I had collected my speci- 

 mens late in August. He further said that, unable to find 

 the plant at that place, Prof. Peck had secured a conveyance 

 to Carthage, and that he understood from the party who 

 drove him there that he also failed to find it there. 



The narrative interested me intensely, and I did not hesi- 

 tate long in accepting the invitation of my friend, Mr. Com- 

 stock, to come and spend a little time at Evans' Mills, and 

 to go about the country again. To be brief, I spent the most 

 of two days (September 5 and 6, 1888) almost exclusively in 

 the investigation of this question. One hour after arriving 

 there I satisfied myself that the King-Devil was none other 

 than Hieracium pra^altum, which, as I had predicted, had 

 been sown broadcast by the wind over that entire section of 

 the state, and had now become a veritable terror to the 

 farmers. We traveled over much of the worst infested re- 

 gion and found no one who did not know perfectly well what 



