DIOR 
Claypole.] 428 [May 18, 
cerum or pumilum, the box-leaved huckleberry, a low evergreen plant 
of the Heath Family, giving as its habitat ‘‘near Winchester.’’ Its dis- 
covery was a testimony to the thoroughness and minuteness of his work in 
a day when traveling for botanical investigation in North America meant 
hardship, privation and even danger. ‘The county was unsettled and un- 
inhabited, and the botanist was compelled to wander over pathless moun- 
tains, and through forests where the lumberman’s axe had never been 
heard, and to carry with him the results of his labors on his shoulders, or 
at best on horseback. Yet in some cases he and his fellow-workers lighted 
on plants to find which again has required long and painstaking search or 
lucky accident. 
Michaux’s description and specimen remained for many years the only 
evidence of the existence of the Box Huckleberry in the world. 
About the year 1846, Prof. 8. F. Baird, now Secretary of the Smithso- 
nian Institution, was engaged in teaching at Carlisle, Cumberland Co., 
Pa., when he was informed by a friend living in New Bloomfield (Thomas 
McIntyre, Esq., recently deceased) that a plant called in the neighbor- 
hood ‘‘Boxwood,’’ was growing wild near that town. He paid a visit to 
the place under Mr. McIntyre’s guidance, and obtained specimens of the 
plant both for the herbarium and for cultivation. The latter he sent to 
the Botanical Garden at Cambridge. This was Michaux’s plant, Vaccind- 
um brachycerum. Its existence in Pennsylvania had been previously un- 
suspected, and it was thought to be a lost species. Prof. Gray kindly 
informs me that those specimens planted in the Garden nearly forty years 
ago, are still living, and that the plants bloom, but never produce any 
fruit. Evidently the climate of New England does not suit the species, 
or it resents the attempt at domestication. 
Irs HABITAT IN PurRyY County. 
Vaccinium brachycerum, Michaux, Gaylussacia brachycera, Gray, now 
occupies in Perry county a spot of about ten acres, one mile south of New 
Bloomfield, the county-seat, This tract lies on a hillside sloping princi- 
pally to the north-west, and occupied by small timber and laurel. Culti- 
vation has encroached upon it, and so far as I can determine its range was 
somewhat greater only a few years ago. This is, however, not certain, 
as Professor Baird does not very clearly recollect how far it spread in 1846. 
One of the most remarkable facts connected with it is the very sharp line 
which marks its limit. The wood in which it occurs extends for some dis- 
tance along the road, but the Box Huckleberry only grows as far as a hollow 
occupied, in wet weather, by a small stream. Along the right bank of this 
stream it is found freely, on the left side I have never seen a plant. Hence 
it is quite possible that the plant has been restricted in its range for a 
longer time, and that it did not previously occupy the rest of the wood. 
This is rendered more probable by the fact that in other directions its 
range is equally restricted, and its limits as sharply defined. It is per- 
