10 

 ECONOMY IN NATURE 



By P. A Rydberg 



Rising ' ' on stepping stones 

 Of their dead selves to higher things. ' ' 



On Faitoute Avenue in New Orange, New Jersey, used to 

 stand an old cherry tree, seven or eight feet in circumference. 

 About seven feet from the ground it divided into two trunks. 

 Just at the junction of the two there was a big hole, indicating 

 that the tree was decayed and hollow. Nothing of peculiar in- 

 terest about this tree was revealed, however, until the severe 

 storm came in the spring of 1 899, when one of the two trunks 

 was torn down. The hollow trunk contained several bushels of 

 cherry -pits and mulch, produced by decayed cherries and leaves. 

 An adventitious root had sprung from the margin of the hole, 

 ramified in this mass of decayed matter, and grown to the size of 

 the thickness of one's wrist. Not satisfied, however, to feed only 

 on old cherries and leaves, it had sent numerous branches into 

 the decayed portion of the trunk, and the tree was actually feed- 

 ing on itself, like the old wolf which, according to the fable, was 

 eating its own frozen legs. 



REVIEW 



A " Flora oi Vermont,* a list of the fern and seed-plants grow- 

 ing without cultivation," prepared by President Ezra Brainerd, 

 Professor L. R. Jones and Mr. \Y. \Y. Eggleston, a committee 

 of the Vermont Botanical Club, was issued in December, 1900. 

 This list represents much careful and painstaking work on the 

 part of the authors and their associates, involving a thorough- 

 going revision of previously published lists of Vermont plants. 

 The spirit in which the work has been conceived is revealed in the 

 following words from the preface : " In every case where a name 

 is admitted to the main list, there is an authenticated specimen de- 

 posited in one or more of the permanent herbaria of the state, or 



* Brainerd, Jones and Eggleston. Flora of Vermont, a list of fern- and seed- 

 plants growing without cultivation. 8vo. Pp. i-xii ; 1-113. Burlington, 15 D. 

 1900. [Extracted from Twentieth Vermont Agricultural Report.] 



