NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 7 309 
with each other, so that the carpels, in this view, will be opposite 
the sepals. —J. Torrey, in Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club. 
A MONSTROSITY IN ANEMONE PATENS.— While on a recent bot- 
anizing tour in the Rocky Mountains, I found a flower of Anemone 
patens, var. Nuttalliana, in which all the numerous pistils are 
thoroughly transformed into organs resembling petals, so as to 
give the flower the appearance of being perfectly double. 
The five petal-like sepals, and also the stamens, are present in 
their normal state. The transformed pistils are somewhat longer 
than the sepals, but of the same pale purple color. The outer- 
most, or those next the stamens, are three parted, as if to repre- 
sent the leaves of the plant, while the central ones are entire, like 
the sepals. The root which produced this beautiful anomaly, bore 
three other scapes, each with a flower perfectly normal. 
The specimen I have carefully preserved, as a most interesting 
instance of a wild flower becoming double without the aid of cul- 
tivation. But why were not the other flowers which grew from the 
same root also double ?— Epwarp L. GREENE, Golden City, Colo- 
Why not? Quien sabe? By the way, full double Thalictrum 
anemonoides is found now and then in perfectly wild plants, and 
sometimes in Anemone nemorosa.— Ep 
AsuGa REPTANS L.—I have detected this plant growing abun- 
dantly in a field in Saco, Maine, where it appears to be well estab- 
lished. It resembles Brunella vulgaris so closely in its habit, that 
I think it may have been overlooked elsewhere. It has been be- 
fore (1851) found near Montreal, but not, so far as I can learn, 
in the United States. —G. L. GOODALE. 
ZOOLOGY. 
Tae Hummie Brrp.—In the month of June, 1870, we discov- 
ered a Ruby-throated humming bird building its nest near and a 
few feet below our chamber window. We observed carefully the 
building of the nest, the period of incubation and the time that 
_ the young left the nest. On the 14th of June we first saw the bird 
building the nest on top of a horizontal branch of a pear tree; 
the branch was about quarters of an inch in diameter under 
the nest. The bird built up the side farthest from the house first, 
