24 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



to more fully protect them, and then add to their number 

 by transplanting- from unprotected areas. 



There are a few plants that if protected at all must be 

 protected in the situations they now occupy. If the sites 

 cannot be purchased outright, the owner may be induced 

 to allow the plants to be protected. When plants can be 

 transplanted — and a majority of the showy wild-flowers 

 , thrive under such treatment — they might be removed to 

 the grounds surrounding our public schools. Cultivated 

 in such surroundings they would teach botany as well as 

 plant protection. Here, too, the plants should be pro- 

 tected by law, and it would be perhaps best to entrust the 

 supervision of both planting and protection to a board 

 consisting in part at least of botanists and others not 

 connected with the school. And in the end it seems that 

 our aim should be, not simply to protect the wild-flowers, 

 but to make the most of them — to get from them all the 

 beauty, fragrance, pleasure and instruction that we can. 



PARTRIDGE BERRIES RIPENING INDOORS. 



BY MRS. H. A. DeCOSTER. 



TWO years ago last autumn I took up some roots of 

 Mitchella repens and planted three in a fern dish with 

 small plants of Christmas fern {Aspidium acrostichoides), 

 ebony spleenwort (Asplenium eheneum) and spinulose 

 wood fern {Aspidium spinulosum var. intermedium) . The 

 bright red berries of Mitchella kept fresh and plump all 

 through the winter, and in March several flower buds 

 appeared in the axils of the terminal leaves. The buds 

 opened and the little twin flowers were as fragrant and 

 dainty as if growing on their native heath. They seemed 

 to last longer, too, than the same flowers growing in the 

 woods. The berries began to grow after a few days and 

 soon literally pushed the blossoms out of house and home. 



When the flowers fell the green berries were fully half- 

 grown, and the last year's berries seemed as plump as 

 ever. They soon began to shrivel, however, and finally, 



