1898 } OBSERVATIONS UPON THE NEWER BOTANY 261 
low forms of plants that live upon organic matter similar to the 
more exalted flower-bearing parasites. 
There are many plants that, while making their own food, 
are seemingly without green: This is only a seeming, for 
beneath all the bright color there is an abundance of the chloro- 
phyll, which may be as readily extracted from the showy coleus 
leaf as from the green grass. 
There is a long list of questions that naturally arise in the 
thoughtful mind as to the behavior of plants in relation to the 
sunshine. To illustrate this we will go out in imagination into 
the woods and clearing. 
A BIT OF FIELD WORK. 
It is possible that a little study like the following may be 
made. Let me draw the outline of the problem that is to be 
investigated. Imagine, if you will, you are standing upon a 
slope of land facing the north, that the sun may not blind your 
eyes. To the right is a wood lot, with its oak, hickory, chestnut, 
birch, and other trees, standing neighborly, with arms inter- 
locked, not too closely for comfort, and through the branches 
the broken shafts of light reach the shrubbery and herbaceous 
vegetation beneath. There are the alders, huckleberries, and 
their close of kin, the Virginia creeper, running upon the ground 
and over the smaller trees in the vicinity of a sleepy rivulet 
bordered by skunk cabbage and jack-in-the-pulpit. Where it is 
not quite so marshy the ground view of the woods is delightfully 
obscured by a luxuriant growth of the cinnamon fern, for it is* 
midsummer. 
To the left is a similar piece of young wood lot, not a prime- 
val forest in either instance, and here the wild grape clings to 
the young maple, and the poison sumach may be lurking in the 
low land. In front of you, however, lies a strip twenty rods 
wide, where the woodman’s axe has done its destructive work, 
and the clumps of small growth you see are the sprouts from the 
maple and other stumps. This is the second season from the 
time of clearing. 
