124 NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
In America a fossil Sambucus occurs in the Miocene 
shales, and has been known and named as S. amadilis very 
distinct by its long tapering leaflets. 
One of the most interesting things in the distribution 
of living Sambucus is the occurrence of a species of the 
Asiatic group in the mountains of German East Africa, 
described by Engler, now to be known as Sambucus adnata 
Africana. 
A neighbor hereabout once surprised the writer by 
asserting that he had seen an elderberry bush sixty feet 
high. I got him to show me what he meant, and I was 
guided to a lofty oak stubb (an oak tree whose crowning 
top had been twisted off by a tornado perhaps), among the 
decayed wood, near the bunch of shivers, a fine berry 
bearing shrub grew thriftily, true to the letter of the joking 
assertion. 
