NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 128 
There is an immensely greater number of the purple 
berried form growing about here (Township of Burford). 
The red-berried species ripens its fruit about a month earlier 
than S. Canadensis, and at a period when wild fruit as a 
food for numerous species of birds is very scarce, so the 
cymes are quickly stripped, and so the bushes have not as 
good a chance to multiply as the purple-berried form. 
Many years since the writer of these notes allowed a 
a bush of the red-berried elder to grow in his garden, and 
the shrub bore an abundance of berries. It was visited by 
a flock of wild pigeons, which speedily stripped the branches 
bare of berries. Many of the pigeons were evidently 
scarcely full fledged young, just from the parental nest, 
and were very tame. This was in the year 1853. The 
wild ‘‘ Passenger Pigeons’’ were numerous about here 
until 1873. In 1866 very great numbers visited the newly 
sown fields of peas and barley in April and May, and caused 
much loss and annoyance by eating the sprouting grain, 
In ‘‘ Torreya,’’ for June of the present year, appears 
an interesting botanical article giving much interesting 
information about the genus Sambucus. In our elderberry 
the corolla is five-lobed, but in two foreign species, the 
corolla is said to be (in one species) four-lobed, and in 
another species only three-lobed. The four-petaled form 
has a single species, confined to Australia and Tasmania. 
The austral division of these aberrant forms has sug- 
gested the idea that they are the oldest members of the 
genus. 
In the Tripetalous species the berries are golden 
yellow, and hence it has been suggested that the yellow 
mutations are Atavistic. 
The most ancient species of Sambucus known are fossil 
in Baltic Amber. They are represented by beautifully 
preserved flowers. 
What is very remarkable S. multiloba has a seven- 
lobed corolla. 
