166 STENOSIPHON VIRGATUS.—THE STENOSIPHON. 
as growing on high prairies and in rocky soil, and Ruffner says it 
is common in northern Texas. One author refers to it as being 
a peculiar feature of dry rocky knolls, covering with graceful 
beauty, spots on which little else will grow at all, and we may 
almost imagine it furnished the 
“Rocks rich with summer garlands,” 
in the 
ef savannahs where the bison roves,” 
and 
es where the desert eagle wheels and screams,” 
of which Bryant tells us in one of his poems. ‘These arid parts 
of our territory seem to be its chosen home. The plant illus- 
trated was from Texas, and kindly presented to us by Dr. George 
Thurber. The drawing was made quite late in the season, after 
the plant had materially exhausted itself; and the first flowers 
were rather larger than we have represented, and the leaves 
during the early part of the summer are nearly as large as 
weeping-willow leaves. It grows vigorously in good garden 
soil, as if it did not need much coaxing to give up its love for 
its dry native home. It does not attempt to flower in Philadel- 
phia gardens till frost may be expected to appear. fut it trans- 
plants easily into a box or pot, and with very slight protection 
from frost blooms freely all the winter long. Torrey and Gray 
speak of it asa perennial; but in our experience it dies after 
flowering. Its woody roots are probably deceptive: at best it is 
perhaps but a biennial. It is however very easily propagated 
by cuttings, and in this way can be continued by the florist, 
without difficulty, from year to year. Its gracefully elegant 
racemose branchlets of rosy-tinted white flowers specially com- 
mend it to the artistic designer in flower work. It will be a 
popular winter-flowering plant when its merits in this particular 
become better known. 
The lovers of peculiarities in structure will find in the long 
slender tubes, already noted, an interesting subject for examina- 
tion. They are so long and slender, so hair-like, that if green 
