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oldest document that is extant relating to the plant that had just 
been introduced into Europe.* 
Late on the same day I drove out with Madame Ernest Oster- 
rieth to her country place, Le Voshol, near Brasschaet, Province 
of Antwerp, where I was shown all her plantations and the beau- 
tiful pine forest filled with the superb rhododendrons, for which 
the estate is famed. They were in the height of their flowering 
season and a sight long to be remembered. 
The next stop was at Amsterdam, where the interesting de- 
tails of the Botanic Garden were explained to me by its eminent 
director, Professor Hugode Vries. The garden is not large, but 
admirably arranged and planted in every way for study. Its 
most interesting portion is undoubtedly that small section where 
for the last fifteen years, Professor de Vries has carried on his 
studies and experiments in the evolution of plant species. This 
portion of the garden is entirely enclosed in wire netting and its 
arrangement and order is most admirable. The long series of 
the now famed Ocnothera Lamarckiana and its progeny had but 
recently been installed into summer quarters in the open ground, 
after having been grown from seed in the glass houses that en- 
close the experiment ground on two of its sides. The seeds are 
sown in sterilized soil and so protected and watched that not a 
weed creeps into the enclosure and the enclosing netting prevents 
any such incursion from above. The neatness and system and 
order is little short of perfect as it would of necessity have to be 
in such close and careful experimentation as that of Professor de 
Vries. Besides the long rows of numbered Oenothera Professor 
de Vries showed me a collection of plants of Geranium pratense 
from which he is hopeful of interesting results ; a small planta- 
tion of Trifolium monophylla and an unusual strain of 4-6-leaved 
clovers that are claiming some of his attention. 
A few books were purchased in Amsterdam and the following 
day I took an early train for Haarlem where a short call was 
made at the great horticultural establishment of Messrs. Krelage, 
* This drawing has been recently cenreaabeasy in color as the frontispiece of Roze, 
Histoire de la Pomme de e Terre, Paris, 1898. 
