1883.] a Gate (Claypole 
fectly easy to walk round the space on which it grows, and see a thick mat 
of it on one side and not a plant on the other. No difference, so faras I can 
discover, exists to account for this limitation. The soil and subsoil are 
alike on both sides. Both are timbered, and with the same kind of trees. 
Slope, exposure, sunshine and drainage are the same. Yet the limitation 
exists, and is most emphatic. 
The most probable conclusion is that we have here a plant to which the 
conditions of life are becoming or have become unfavorable, and which 
is very gradually yielding to their ill effects. These have, perhaps, been 
at work for ages in restricting its range, and would in time have destroyed 
it. Cultivation, however, is its most formidable foe—a foe which may, in 
% Single season, inflict more injury than natural enemies could accom- 
plish in centuries. Two seasons of ploughing would blot the species out 
of the county, and, saving the garden specimens at Cambridge, probably 
out of the world ; for Professor Gray informs me that it cannot now be 
found at the locality given by Michaux in his description, ‘‘ near Win- 
chester,” or at that given on his specimen, ‘‘Warm Spring,’’ and, with 
the exception of one small habitat in Delaware, no other place is known 
in which it has ever been seen.* One or two other supposed habitats, 
which have been tnentioned to me turned out on examination to be erro- 
neous or doubtful, 
In its native dwelling place in Perry county, it is now (May, 1883) in. 
abundant blossom, but judging from the appearance of the fruit of last 
* With regard to this habitat for the Box Huckleberry I had not been able to 
obtain any definite information at the time of writing the above paper. Since 
then, however, I have been favored by A. Commons, Esq., of Faulkland, New 
Castle Co., Delaware, with a few particulars concerning it. I give an extract 
from Mx, Commons’s letter : 
“The Box-leaved Huckleberry was found by me some years ago growing on 
the banks of the Indian River, near Millsborough, in Sussex Co,, Delaware. I 
have collected it there at various times but none very recently, Another local- 
ity was reported to me when at Millsborough, said to be about a mile from the 
town in an opposite direction, but I did not visit it. Lam not aware of its oc- 
currence elsewhere in this State, and the patch here is not large. The locality 
is at the head of tidewater on this river. It extends along the steep bank which 
is here 10 or 12 feet in height from a few feet above the water-line to the top of 
the bank, but not, beyond this. My impression is that it may have been intro- 
duced by tidal agency.” 
A hill-side in Perry Co, and the bank ofa tidal river in Delaware, are places 
affording very different conditions, but Mr. Commons has kindly sent me spec- 
imens between which and those from this county I cannot discover the slight- 
est difference, 
I may further add that while gathering some of the plants I one day found a 
small caterpillar feeding on the leaves and spinning them together to form 
nest, I putitinto a box and it almost immediately went into a chrysalid and 
in about a month emerged a small Tineid moth with black forewings speckled 
with white, Isentit to V. T. Chambers, Hsq., of Covington, Ky., who has made 
® special study of this fumily, and he informs me that it belongs, almost with 
certainty, to a species described by himself as Glelechia dubitella, Chamb., and 
which has been reported to feed on the Hogweed or Bitterweed, Ambrosia arte- 
Misiifolia, 
