i66 llie Pf/es/ American Scientist. 



a half lines long, the upper three nerved, lower one nerved, scarious 

 margined; flowering glumes oblong, obtusish, flattish on the back, 

 scabrous, about two lines long, scarious tipped, slightly pubescent 

 below, five nerved; palet as long as its glume, acute, ciliate scab- 

 rous on the keels. 



First collected by C. R. Orcutt near San Diego in 1884, and 

 subsequendy by Mr. Lorenzo Jared in Santa Barbara county, Cal. 

 The mature spikelets have the appearance of Glyceria. Its 

 narrow, scabrous leaves and sheaths are good, distinctive char- 

 acters. 



NOTES ON THE COMMON CROW. 



Although this species breeds in this locality in large numbers, 

 their eggs are hard to get, owing to the tall trees in which they 

 build, ranging in height from thirty to fifty or seventy and even one 

 hundred feet. 



April 9th, I took a set of six eggs from a nest in a large chest- 

 nut tree, 44 feet from the ground. This was my earliest find, but 

 a young collector of this place took a set of four on March 31st, 

 and another of six on April 5th. 



April loth, I found a set of five eggs in a black oak, over 45 

 feet up, different from any I had before seen. No two of these 

 were alike; one was heavily blotched at the larger end with dark 

 brown, purple and lilac; the blue background of another was 

 spotted with a few black spots at the base of the egg. 



This afternoon I went to the Valley Forge hills, which might be 

 called the crow's paradise, as the heavily wooded hills afford an 

 excellent breeding place for them. The first nest I found was in 

 a white oak, a few feet below the redoubt thrown up by the Pa- 

 triots over a hundred years ago. In the course of the afternoon I 

 found three sets of 3. 5 and 6 eggs respectively. One nest was 

 lined almost entirely with wool. E. L. Burns. 



Berwin, Pa. 



WASHINGTON/A ROBUSTA. 



Noticing fresh seed of this mythical palm offered in the cata- 

 logues of San Francisco seedsmen lately, I at once wrote to a well 

 known collector and dealer, and much to my surprise, received 

 the following letter with samples of the seeds: 



San Francisco, July 25, 1887. 



Washingtonia robusta is a palm similar to W. filifera. The 

 seeds are very similar, but the growth is more robust and the 

 species is in every respect more desirable. The leaf stems are 

 yellowish, beautifully arched, well set with large yellow thorns. 

 It grows about 70 miles south east of San Bernardino, on the slope 

 of a mountain quite high up, and this is the only group, as far as 

 I know, on the coast, F, A- Miller. 



