BOTANY. 45 
he is actually driven, by his education, into the necessity of resorting to 
forms habits of idleness and intemperance; and the result is, that the 
father not only loses the expenses of his education, but the son himself.” 
“ These farms will all differ essentially in the character of soil and situ- 
ation; and will be conducted under the eye of a skilful Professor of Agri- 
culture for the purpose of testing and developing the thousand mysteries 
which now cloud the knowledge of the farmer. These experiments car- 
ried on under the direction of a scientific observer, who will constantly 
keep note of the weather, the signs of the Zodiac, the application of ma- 
nures, and all the various actual and supposed influences which affect the 
growth of plants; and this, too, at three different points of the State, 
and upon different soils, cannot fail to produce an amount of information 
analea valuable, and which could never be collected by individual 
exertion. Until now our Institution has never had the power of prose- 
cuting these inquiries; but we now start upon a new career girded about 
with the strength of sufficient means, and we hope with pe corian 
to soon make it tell upon the Agricultural interests of the Stat 
POTATOES Growime ABOVE Grounp. —I send you herewith, 
what appears to me to be a rather uncommon freak of nature. I 
remember an old ballad which ran something like this — 
“ They plant aaen in the fall 
ere, over there, 
And they aig risa tops and all 
Over there, over there,” 
but I never knew of any authority for the potatoes growing on the 
stalk above ground until I saw it in the specimen I send. There 
were found in our potato field yesterday several stalks of potatoes 
having from six to twelve or more little potatoes on them, from the 
eyes of which are shooting the regular leaves. They seem in 
these specimens to grow from the axils, but in some other speci- 
mens they seem to be enlargements of the leaf-stem itself. —B. D. 
Eastman, M.D. 
HELENIUM TENNIFOLIUM.—Specimens of this plant were pre- 
sented by Dr. Foreman, having been found by him growing about 
three miles northwest of Baltimore, in the neighborhood of some 
cotton mills. As it is a native of the extreme southwestern 
States of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, it is believed that its 
seeds have been introduced in cotton bales from a southern port. 
The plants observed were few in number, as if recently established, 
but were in vigorous growth and have made abundance of seeds.— 
Proceedings Maryland Academy of Sciences, Nov. 6, 1871. 
