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which arches over it, and is either pale green or a dark glossy 
brown, often striped with white. 
There are usually two leaves, which are three-parted, graceful 
in shape and beautifully veined. The leaf-stalks are sheathing 
at base and enclose that of the flower-cluster. The staminate 
plants are often smaller and paler than the pistillate and wither 
as soon as they have discharged their pollen. Their flowers 
consist of only 2—4 almost sessile, white or purple anthers, borne 
on the fleshy mucilaginous base of the spadix. The pistils are 
crowded together, without calyx or corolla, green, globose and 
tipped with a sessile white stigma; occasionally a few stamens 
may be found above the pistils. The fruit cluster, when ripe, 
is usually prostrate, from 1-3 inches long and the berries are 
bright scarlet. 
Plukenet appears to have been the first to figure this plant 
and he described it in his Phytographia in 1691 as “Arum 
triphyllum minus atrorubente” from plants sent to him by Ban- 
nister from Virginia. Linnaeus in his Species Plantarum, 1753, 
quoted this description and called it ‘Arum triphyllum.” It 
resembles some of the European species of Arum and belongs 
to the Araceae, a family of plants, most of which are tropical 
in their distribution and which includes about 105 genera and 
over 900 species, many of them being large and showy plants 
often climbing on trees and rocks. 
ELIZABETH G. BRITTON. 
THOUGHTLESS DESTRUCTION OF JACK IN THE 
PULPIT 
(WitH Puate XCIV.) 
May 15, 1911, two classes of boys and girls from one of the 
Public Schools of Manhattan accompanied by their teachers, 
spent a few hours in the vicinity of the Lorillard Mansion in 
Bronx Park. They were given permision to pick ‘wild flowers” 
by one of the foremen of the Park Department, and when found, 
at 2 p.m. within the limits of the New York Botanical Garden, 
all the children had large paste-board boxes and newspapers full 
