412 VARIATIONS IN TRILLIUM AND WISTERIA. 
taining their bitter waters; shallow seas once salt, but each 
decade becoming more brackish ; vast desert tracts which up 
to a recent time formed the ocean bed ;—all these phenomena 
indicate a hemisphere gradually emerging from the waters. 
Perhaps the physicist ean discern in these great periodic 
oscillations, the method by which Nature perpetually renews 
the youth of our planet, and maintains its fertility. 
Gentlemen of the American Association: — The hour 
which, in your eourtesy, had been assigned to me, has now 
lapsed, and I must bring these remarks to a close. The 
topies which have passed under review open up spheres of 
thought with regard to time and space too vast to be com- 
pr essed within the limits of a mere oral discourse. Assert- 
ing no ability by reason of profound research to pass 
duthorifatively on these results, may I not inquire: Have 
they not disclosed new paths in the great domain of Nature, 
which may be profitably explored jointly by the geologist 
and the astronomer ; and is there not a probability that there 
will be found to exist an intimate relation between the peri- 
odie fluetuations of temperature on our planet, and the peri- 
odie pertubations to which it is subjected as a part of the 
solar system? Great as have been our achievements in sci- 
ence during the past, we profoundly believe that new tri- 
umphs await the patient observer. 
VARIATIONS IN TRILLIUM AND WISTERIA. 
BY THOMAS MEEHAN. 
Iw a recent number of the “Bulletin of the Torrey Botan- 
ical Club,” of New York, Mr. J. H. Hall describes a plant 
of Trillium erectum, which he has had under his observation 
for several years, and which produced some years white, and 
other years the regular brown purple flowers. I have made 
