Botany and Zoology. 483 
the great loss and Wete, of the inhabitants of this province; be 
it therefore enacte 
reputation. An apparent justification of this ill odor of the Bar- 
(among the agriculturists we mean) a be found in this 
Journal, vol. xlix of the second series, 1870, p. 406. Mr. 
of Salem, the hare sie: ts: old Province Sara who called our 
attention to this 
e barberry had poveanin been widely and pean ys prop- 
in in the older settlements, during the century or century 
and a quarter of their 2 ig and it is a to suppose 
that attempts to exterminate the bushes were not limited to the 
period of this act’s porate When the nlbanetion of wheat 
particularly, declined, the farmers, probably, relaxed their efforts 
against the barberry, and hence may we not account for its pres- 
ent comparative abundance in the sanais of the older towns, 
which were near the seaboar I remember, when a boy, of 
i from 
largely Essex 
eastern ne and that the bush appeared as thrifty as any - 
had ever seen in Essex County. The preamble of this act, per- 
haps, explains the mystery ; for there is no reason to doubt that 
the ‘experience’ of the farmers therein mentioned was neither 
recent nor confined to a few, in 1754, when the ei it neces repre- 
to 
It has been suggested that the barberry never Malls damaged 
the grain-crops of New England, at least to any nota table extent ; 
but that the settlers, bringing with them from England the PoPy 
lar fear of it, legislated _upon that. But if so, we pee a curio 
illustration of the precarious nature of testimony. For be incon: 
this colonial legislation has passed into history as independent 
evidence that the barberry did damage grain in New England. 
2. Ferns of North America ; by Prof. D. C. Eaton. Parts IV 
and V, issued together, a up the seagenea to p. 113, and 
the illustrations to plate 15. All but two of these plates carry a 
couple of species, and the letter-press grows more copious. 
Aspidium Nevadenee well fills a plate, and is capitally managed ; 
it isa new species of the Sierra Nevada, the joint discovery of 
Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Pulsifer Ames, whose names are rig 
identified with California botany. Pelivea densa, 0 
California (which does well in cultivation), and "Pp. pets seers a 
