7^ 



How a Kind Providence Favored 

 a Botanist. 



[Contributed.! 



The gist of this story lies in its 

 dates. 1 begin, then, by saying that in 

 1848 a great event for botanists oc- 

 curred — Dr. Gray brought out hi« 

 "Manual of the J3otany of the North- 

 ern United States." Up to that time 

 the only manual for the New England 

 botanists was Dr. Bigelow's "Plants 

 of Boston and its Vicinity," but a 

 fuller work was much needed ; many 

 plants had been discovered within our 

 limits in the thirty years since that 

 work first appeared ; the science, too, 

 had advanced. 



People bought the new manual, 

 and besides using it to trace out the 

 names of their "finds," they read it 

 to see what to look for and where to 

 seek desired plants, so Stephen T. 

 Olney, of Providence, a most active 

 local botanist, came across thia:"Ery- 

 thraea spicata; sandy shore, Nantuck- 

 et." "What!" was doubtless his men- 

 tal exclamation, "As rare as that? On- 

 ly one locality in the whole country? 

 Nantucket is not far off ; I must run 

 down there and look it up. And I 

 can get the Obione, too, and the low 

 Amaranth of the sea beach — both 

 common enough on our southern coast, 

 but rare north of New Jersey. ' ' 

 So on the 8th day of the next Aug- 

 ust, 1849, he left his home and started 

 for 'he island. Now the day before 

 that a party of young people thought 

 it would be nice to have a sail and a 

 picnic and a good time generally, and 

 they would not go to Tuckernuck, the 

 usual place for such excursions, but 

 to Coskaty. In these days they choose 

 Wauwinet, but then that side of "the 

 head of the harbor" was as un- 

 visited as Muskeget — its very name 

 still hidden away in old deeds from 

 the Indians. 



Well, a boat and a skipper having 

 been secured, the party met on the 

 wharf the next day, the 8th, and went 

 aboard; this present writer had been 

 invited to join the company, but for 

 some reason, forgotten now, she could 

 not do so. So at about the hour that 

 Mr. Olney stepped forth from his 

 house these gay young folks set sail 

 from the wharf, and as they began 



