their respective trips at the same 

 time, so they ended them, and the end 

 brought them together. Mr. OIney 

 came down the boat's gangway 

 just in time to meet the Coskaty 

 party on their return, and what 

 did they have in their hands but 

 small bunches of that desired Ery- 

 thraea, a plant entirely new to all of 

 them. An exchange was made at once; 

 the Nantucketers gave the little ilow- 

 er, the off-islander the name, which 

 my cousin George Clapp got from Mr. 

 Olney in writing and then brought 

 straight to me with some of the speci- 

 mens. Its name now is Centaurium 

 spicatum, but the name was changed 

 from Erythraea long after Mr. Olney 's 

 visit. 



Now there are some things about 

 this occurrence worth reflecting upon. 

 1 will venture to assert that not a 

 person on the island at that time knew 

 of this little thing. To this day, 

 with botanists coming every summer 

 and diligently searching our whole 

 island, it has never been reported from 

 any part of our long sea beach, fifty 

 miles or over, except from that place 

 and a few neighboring localities, and 

 at that time if it had met the eyes of 

 the fishermen and the few gunners 

 who went up there, they would have 

 paid no more attention to it than to a 

 bit of kelp or a penny shell. Mr. 

 Olney would never have thought to 

 take a boat and go to that remote 

 .spot; he easily found his other two 

 desired plants; he had only to go to 

 Rrant Point and then walk along the 

 beach where they were not uncommon 

 — ^unattractive, weedy looking growths, 

 the flower of both green and hardly 

 larger than a pin's head. 



He might well have expected Ery- 

 thraea at every step, but no — that 

 was to reach him through the nicest 

 adjustment of circumstances. A va- 

 riation of one mintue at any stage of 

 his journey or of the sail-boat's trip, 

 a choice of another day on either side, 

 a choice of a different picnicking 

 ground — my reader can lengthen as 

 well as I, this list of possibilities, any 

 one of which would have sent our 

 visitor home, a disappointed man. 



All botanists have their tales of cu- 

 rious incidents leading them to rari- 

 ties, but is there any one quite as re- 

 markable as this? None that I ever 

 heard of. What shall we say of them? 

 Each will have his own answer; mine 

 ia that a Providence which watches 

 over even the sparrow does not disdain 

 these seemingly trifling affairs of 

 ours, but kindly leads ui to our desired 

 end. 



Maria L. Owen. 



