180 THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
important localities, and by ignoring the numerous observa- 
tions that have been published during the last 30 years on the 
natural history of our native plants. 
Considering the large size of some of the volumes published 
by the Smithsonian Institution, entitled Contributions from 
the U. S. National Herbarium, it seems more than strange 
that said Institution, now for 8 years, has withheld Dr. Edw. 
L. Greene’s second volume of Botanical Landmarks. Dr. 
Greene’s painstaking work deserved a better fate; for when 
considered in comparison with the works discussed in the 
preceding pages one can scarcely doubt that Dr. Greene’s 
history is better fitted to fulfill the function for which the 
Smithsonian Institution avowedly exists, i. e. “For the dif- 
fusion of knowledge among men.” 
- In bringing this discussion to a close, I cannot abstain from 
expressing the opinion about the new Flora of the District 
of Columbia, that its aim was not to distribute knowledge 
among men; but rather to enforce the Brittonian nomencla- 
ture, to apotheosize the National Herbarium; and to distri- 
bute among men, in the guise of scientific authority, an un- 
precedented ignorance of elementary Botany. 
Clinton, Md., June 1921. 
Notes on the Habits of the Soft-Shell Turtle—Amyda Mutica. 
BY J. F. MULLER, J. H. U. 
The eine forming the basis of this article were 
made on an island of the Mississippi River, about a mile above 
Fairport, Iowa, and on the Illinois side, while the writer was 
serving in the Bureau of Fisheries. This island was very 
typical of the large number scattered along the river. Ap- 
proximately triangular in shape, it was bounded on the north 
by the open river, on the south by a narrow channel, or 
slough, between it and another island, on the east by another 
channel and island, and on the west by an area of shallow 
