106 THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
mournfully says: “the ardor of modern botanists is fast putting 
an end to its brief career,” and then adds, “this case presents 
some features of peculiar interest, because the Irish specimens 
would seem to have been settled in the country for a very long 
period, sufficient to have set up an incipient tendency toward 
the evolution of a new species; for they had so far varied be- 
fore their first discovery by botanists that Lindley considered 
them to be distinct from their American allies, and even Dr. 
Bentham originally so classed them, though he now admits the 
essential identity of both kinds.’’ 
Spiranthes graminea, variety Waltert, carries one 
straight rank of more open flowers and gets its ad- 
jective, “ grassy,” from the localities where it grows. 
A. more lowland species than the last, it appears to 
have also a more southward range and to be most 
common in the meadows along the coast. 
Spiranthes gracilis, the Slender Spiranthes, ar- 
i, ranging its tiny flowers like S. gramzinea, bears its 
\ leaves clustered at the base of the stem, but from 
@ their small size and their habit of withering when 
y, the plant flowers they count for very little. This 
F3G-33—Footer species ordinarily has clustered roots, but Dr. N. 
PIRANTHES Ro~ 
manzoviana. |, Britton, of Columbia College, has found it in 
Ulster Co., New York, with a single tuber. Nature must be 
fond of the Slender Spiranthes, or she would not permit it to 
flourish in comparatively dry soil and to enjoy a four months’ 
lease of life. One need not be surprised to see it in July or to 
gather it with S. cernua in October. 
In the structure of S. gracilis (and of S. cernua as well) we 
have a more more complex arrangement than one would dream 
existed in flowers so minute and unpretending; as is shown in 
Darwin’s account of the British S. autumnalis. The stigma 
occupies about the same place that it does in a Habenaria. 
There is also a rostellum, but this is curiously different from 
