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winter use and forgotten them. Scattered through the woods 

 among the paper-birches, I collected also clusters of seedlings 

 which looked as if a whole catkin had germinated just as it fell. 

 This also was probably the work of the squirrel for the seeds 

 usually fall out and are blown away singly. These seedlings were 

 brought home and some of them potted just as they were ; the 

 young plants have "thinned themselves out,'" and the few that 

 remain in each pot, lean away from each other at precisely the 

 angle which clumps of birches grow in. It seems probable that 

 this will explain why the birches are frequently found growing 

 in this way. — E. G. Britton. 



Notes on Astragalus. — One of the most common failings of 

 manual descriptions results in leaving the student without a vivid 

 and definite impression of the plant as a whole, segregating it and 

 its kind from all others ; in other words, a specific impression. 

 One is impressed by this more and more as he does larger amounts 

 of field work and sees the plants at home and learns to know them 

 equally well at all seasons. The best books become then " a 

 weariness to the flesh " at times, because of their laboratory flavor. 

 The illustrations in Britton and Brown help notably to overcome 

 this failing, though they can give but one form where several may 

 be found by the investigator in the field. Two species of Astra- 

 galus, with which it has been my good fortune to live, fail to find 

 their proper description in any manuals that I have seen, viz., A. 

 Piatt ensis Nutt. and A. Hypoglottis L. These are both caespitose 

 in habit, from underground stems, forming beds a rod or more in 

 extent, possibly and probably from several parent plants. A. 

 crassicarp7is Nutt. and all the others with which these are bo- 

 tanically associated branch from the crown of a deep tap-root. 

 The individual plants remain self-centered and isolated while the 

 two of which I speak may be called gregarious. Now I wish to 

 insist that this is the characteristic of these two species, so that 

 with a slight knowledge in addition the collector may identify 

 these species without waiting for fruit to mature, as otherwise he 

 might have to do. Surely such marks as these, if known to the 

 author, should never be omitted from any descriptions. Yet these 

 are the very ones that are most likely to be omitted. — J. M. Bates. 



