FIELD NOTES OF WESTERN BOTANY 313 



Rafinesque some specimens of Myosurus gathered by himself 

 at the place named. An account of the plant, as presumably 

 indigenous to Kentucky, was published by Rafinesque in 18 19 

 (Sillim. Am. Journ. i. 379). Several years afterwards, Dr. Leaven- 

 worth found the plant near Augusta, Georgia, so that Elliott was 

 enabled to admit it to his Flora — now long since become the great 

 classic of southern botany — as an American plant (EH. Sk. i. 582). 

 I think its second appearance by name and description in one of 

 our Floras was with Eaton & Wright, who reports it as exclusively 

 Southern. This was in 1840, yet so rare was the plant even at 

 the South, that Chapman in the last issue of his Flora, which 

 was in 1897, mentions the two localities for it as Augusta . 

 Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee; and Dr. Small, in even the 

 latest issue of his Flora, adds nothing definite about its distribution 

 there. 



It is not needful to trace here step by step the history of its 

 appearing as an element in the floras of somewhat more northerly 

 sections of the country; but there are two interesting facts to be 

 taken note of respecting its distribution in this country which 

 should be considered. One of thenj is this, that Myosurus mini- 

 nriis as from Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, does not spread 

 northward at all, except for a little distance, and its advance this 

 way is very slow. I think it was not heard of as being within 

 the borders of so southerly a State as Virginia until the year 1893, 

 when Mr. Coville collected small specimens of the species at 

 Norfolk, on the first of April. On this it is remarked in Britton 

 and Brown that it seems there like an introduced plant; and such 

 beyond doubt it is; for if it had been native in any of that part 

 of Virginia, some one or more of the ardent explorers of Virginian 

 botany of one hundred and even two hundred years ago most 

 probably would have found and recorded it. Its introduction 

 at Norfolk, then, may be believed to have taken place quite 

 recently. 



Again, quite well southward, even not so far from where Dr. 

 Short almost a hundred years since gathered it in Kentucky, is 

 my Illinois station for the plant, where also it grows only on cul- 

 tivated ground. The locality is in Marion County, a mile or more 

 from the town of Odin, going westward along the railway, and 

 where having observed it in so surprising an abimdance, yet in a 



