PERIPATETIC BOTANY 113 



a more workmanlike fashion, and him also the 

 key led to the Bignoniacece, but no farther. As 

 the common saying is, the trail had " run up a 

 tree." In short, with all the facts before us, — 

 leaves, buds, blossom, fruit, — we were stumped. 

 " It is some representative of the Bignonia fam- 

 ily not included in Chapman's Flora," was the 

 professor's final verdict. 



The next forenoon we had agreed to spend 

 together in the big hammock, through which I 

 had been saimtering by myself for the past five 

 weeks. We should pass the Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station on the way, and I determined to 

 carry the troublesome specimen along and submit 

 it to the professor in charge. So said, so done ; 

 but as we stopped at the post office, there stood 

 the man himself at the door. " What is this ? " I 

 asked, scarcely waiting to bid him good-morning. 

 " Crescentia," he answered promptly, " a plant 

 of the Bignonia family." So the other professor 

 had been exactly right. 



And now for the more dramatic part of the 

 story. The day before — at noon of the day on 

 which I found the plant in question — I received 

 a letter from a Boston friend, himself a univer- 

 sity professor of botany, to whom I had written, 

 begging him to quit his desk, like a reasonable 

 man, and join me in this botanical paradise. He 



