THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION, 1 67 



result of an injury or bruise to the plant at an early stage of growth, 

 as about that time the spot where the Helianthus grew was annoy- 

 ingly trespassed upon and much trampled by a flock of turkeys. 



II. 



Another eccentricity in one of the wild, weedy growths that 

 spring up so frequently in neglected corners of our fields, occurred 

 last August in a plant of the the tall golden-rod, Solidago Canadensis. 

 The stems of these plants are sometimes deformed by a peculiar 

 enlargement or excrescence (balloon shaped). These enlargements 

 are hollow and are almost always found to contain the larva or 

 pupa of an insect, and are probably the result of a puncture by 

 the parent insect. 



The unusual circumstance noted this season was that the 

 enlargements were at the very summit of the stem, and were of the 

 shape and size of the egg of a bantam chicken instead of being 

 turbinate in shape. The puncture, if such was the cause, seemed 

 to have been made in the axil or point from whence the branches 

 of the panicle divide off. These latter, which are perhaps more 

 properly termed peduncles, were much shortened and seemed to 

 grow at slight distances from each other out of the upper and 

 narrow end of the ovate excrescence. A number of these peculiar- 

 ities were seen this year and never previously. The other common 

 species of golden-rod, S. latifolia and .S". ubnifolia^ have never been 

 noticed to be deformed by those interferences. 



As an instances of the imitative principle in vegetable growth, 

 our attention was lately arrested by a form of parasitical develop- 

 ment of, I think, the poison ivy Rhus toxicodendron. The plant had 

 sheTi its leaves, therefore we could not take time to identify, but the 

 general outline and form and color of the shrub, as it clung in hide- 

 ous snake-like contortions of a venomous purple tint, to the tall 

 trunk of a swamp-ash tree, suggested the abhorrent function and 

 malignancy of an enormous Scolopendra. The innumerable radi- 

 cating tendrils typified and suggested the myriad feet of the detested 

 centipede ! And the greyish-white bark of the victimized ash tree 

 afforded a background that set off the outline and complexion of 

 the vampire-like encumbrance with wonderful force and per- 

 spicuity. 



