Ti4 ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES.— SCOT1’S SPLEENWOKT. 
Thus it became impossible for his scientific friends to aid him to 
any great extent, though conscious of his eminent talents. His 
botanical acuteness enabled him easily to place any unknown 
plant from any part of the world in its systematic relationships, 
and in a remarkabuy snort time to discover its proper name and 
history. Had he retained his proper faculties he might have 
become a prince in Botany. He came to America in 1848, taking 
up with the horticultural profession for a living. In 1867-8, his 
mind gave way, and he died a few years ago in the State lunatic 
asylum at Harrisburg. 
It is no wonder that so acute an observer should have detected 
a new species in this solitary plant. But it was strange that he 
could find no leading botanist in America, to whom he sub- 
niutted specimens, to agree with him, or give him the slightest 
encouragement in his researches—as he thought, because he was 
but “a poor gardener.” Satisfied, however, that it was new, he 
described it himself with an illustration in the magazine above 
cited, but still no notice was taken of it in our own land. He 
then thought he would try the European botanists, and in 1866, 
one year after his own description, the Rev. M. G. Berkeley 
noticed it in “the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society of 
London” in July of that year as “probably a hybrid,” but 
retaining Mr. Scott’s name. This little piece of history has its 
valuable lesson. It teaches the student to search carefully for 
facts; and when he, himself, is sure of the facts, not to be too 
easily disheartened because others do not at once see things as 
he does. 
Since Mr. Scott found his single plant, several others have 
been found in the same vicinity by Mr. Bourquin, a botanist of 
Camden, New Jersey; by Miss Julia S. Tutwiler, of Greene 
Springs, near the Black Warrior river; and by W. H. Leggett, at 
Canaan in Connecticut. Mr. John Williamson, in his “ Ferns of 
Kentucky,” published in 1878, remarks: “We have in Kentucky 
all the Aspleniums found in the Northern United States, except 
the somewhat doubtful +1. cbenordes,’—but before the sheets of 
