*54 



BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



tt 



[June, 



It is the rarest of plants here. The locality where it was first seen is 

 now on one of the main business streets of Englewood, and mostly cov- 

 ered with buildings. I afterwards found a few plants about a mile farther 

 south, at Normal Park, and transplanted some of them, as the locality 

 was rapidly passing into the hands of those building residences. But 

 one of these plants is now living, a vigorous specimen, and with rather 

 larger flowers than when planted, as if cultivation agreed with it. I have 

 looked for plants every summer since these were taken up (1S86), but so 

 far without finding them. It grows in company with the typical A. 

 ptarmicoides, which is everywhere abundant in the dry grounds here. 

 But the plant in my garden is the only one I know to be existing this 

 side of British America, though I shall still continue the search for it. I 

 should expect the connection of these widely separated localities to be by 

 way of Lakes Michigan and Superior. Several years ago I found a some- 

 what similar case, an isolated patch of a malvaceous plant, Sphmmlcea riv- 

 ularis Torr., on an island of the Kankakee river. Its home is in the far 

 west, " W. Wyoming, northward and westward " (Coulter's Manual of 

 Rocky Mountain Botany). In a notice of this plant, in the "American 

 Journal of Science "(3, vii, 239), Dr. Gray gave his opinion as follows: 

 " Unexpected as the discovery is it is not difficult to see how the species 

 may have got there. A good many northwestern plants occur on the 

 shore of the southern end of Lake Michigan, evidently through water 

 transport. Some of these may have come in recent times, although this 

 could not be inferred simply from the fact that they have not been no- 

 ticed until lately. Here is one which probably came so long ago as when 

 Lake Michigan discharged into the Mississippi, the lower part of the 

 Kankakee river being in the direct course of the discharge. The present 

 plants may more probably be regarded, not as chance stragglers, but as 

 lingering remnants indicating an ancient habitat." When the Aster was 



sent, he expressed similar views regarding its presence here.-E. J. Hill, 

 Englewood, HI. 



A phase of conjugation in Spirogyra.-The accompanying illustration 

 was made from a camera lucida drawing of a phase of polygamy in 



Spirogyra longata 

 which was put in 

 alcohol in May, 

 1888. It completes 

 the history of the 

 phase suggested by 

 Rose's nos. 10, 11 

 and 12, vol x, page 



TUan „ , . . - 304,of the Gazette. 



ine contents of e seem to have passed into a and b and a zygospore has 

 been formed in each. That in a is larger and darker than the one in b. 

 The same is true in c and d.-C. B. Atwell, Evanston. III. 



