Notes and News 27 



will consult Fern Bulletin, Volume 4, page 48, and the 

 same publication Volume 5, page 15, he will discover 

 that Dicksonia was mistaken for the fragrant fern but 

 not by Clute. The man who made the mistake and 

 who listed the Dicksonia under the name of a rarer 

 fern in a well known State flora was a much more prom- 

 inent botanist. It was Clute who first pointed out the 

 error. We have always been taught that New England- 

 era are committed to plain living and high thinking, 

 but it is apparent that the last mentioned process 

 sometimes slips a cog. The matter of the Dicksonia 

 is not of much consequence, yet we feel that we ought 

 to stop this careless kind of thinking at the outset: 

 otherwise, some other misguided fern student may in- 

 form the public that he thinks that Clute was the first 

 one to mistake carrots for ferns. Up to the present, 

 however, we have been able to prove an alibi; in faet 

 we have laid in quite a stock of alibis in anticipation 

 of having use for them when the thinking in New England 



gets to running smoothly. 



Willard N. Clute. 



Hybrids in Equiseti m° 



In an article entitled "Anatomy as a means of diag- 

 nosis of spontaneous plant hybrids" (Science, N. S. S&: 

 932, 26 Dec 1913), Miss Ruth Holden discusses evidence 

 indicating that plants may be hybrids without showing 

 intermediate external characters. In such cases a study 

 of their anatomy will serve to reveal their real relation- 

 ships. 



For example, a birch growing at the Arnold Arboretum 



which had been identified as Betula pumila was found to 



possess wood characters entirely different from those o 

 B. pumila together with peculiarities of stamen structure 

 with nearly abortive pollen. These facts, together witn 



