630 On the Compass Plant. [August, 



leaves, especially of the radical ones, have shown that as to prev- 

 alent position, the popular belief has a certain foundation in fact." 



I wish now to refer to the exceptions. Besides the fact above 

 stated, that great differences are shown in the growth of the 

 plant in different states and regions, it has repeatedly been 

 reported to me that an east and west position of the leaf has 

 been discovered. In 1843 letters to the National Institute made 

 the statement that occasionally a leaf would be found east and 

 west. In a letter to me from St. Louis county, Mo., June 19th, 

 1866, from Mr. A. Fendler (a very careful painstaking botanist), 

 he said : " Of the thirty-four leaves examined on the hill, eleven 

 were in the true meridian, one was due east and west, one was as 

 much as 6o° east, and but three deviating more than 25 ° from 

 the true meridian. The ' compass plant,' although its leaves do 

 not invariably point due north and south, is yet entitled to the 

 name it bears, not only from observations made on the open 

 prairies, but even from those made on the hills. For in the latter 

 case I find that about one-third of the number of their leaves 

 exactly coincide with the meridian, and more than another third 

 is of so small an angle as 3 — io° from the true north." 



Professor Gray, in the article in the Botanical Magazine above 

 referred to, says : " As to their orientation, 2 not only is this rather 

 vague in the cultivated plant, but subject to one singular anom- 

 aly. I have several times met with a leaf abruptly and perma- 

 nently twisted to a right angle in the middle, so that while the 



u, whole plant w. 

 Hill, LL.D.,the 

 I of Science for No 



