THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 67 
dens hailing from Japan and China. Our plant, though perennial, 
has a very short period of active vegetation. After blooming in 
early April, and displaying for a too-brief period its exquisite fern- 
like leaves, it withers and disappears till another year. Its life 
is all this long time confined to the small, grain-like bulbs, barely 
subterranean. The flowers are in racemes on a naked stalk and 
are creamy white in color. Very curiously constructed, it is the 
divergent petals, sac-shaped and hollow, that give the plant its 
popular name. It might be called "white hearts" in distinction 
from the bleeding Dicentra spectahilis. 
Both the Dutchmen and Hepaticas love rocky regions. Where I 
found them this year was on ridges rising from six to eight hun- 
dred feet above sea-level, broken and tossed into fantastic forms 
by ancient convulsions of nature. As I gathered the bonnie gems, 
reminiscent of happy childhood, I could look far off over Croton 
Lake, to the distant Highlands and the rolling hills of Connecticut. 
Surely there is no more beautiful region than Westchester even in 
surpassing New York ! 
Another little plant coming up everywhere, is common also here 
with us, but never the feature that it is in New York. This is 
the Saxifrage, whose name denotes it a "rock-breaker." Coming 
up in the interstices of cliffs or cracks of bowlders, it acts very 
much as does a lichen in disintegrating the minerals and preparing 
the way for other plants. 
The leaves, spatulate in shape, are gathered in a rosette close 
to the ground. The flowers, small and white, are borne in a 
cluster at the top of a naked stalk only a few inches in height. 
When the blossoms fade, the red seed-pods are almost as pretty. 
Now comes also the incense-bush, or spice, or fever-bush, a 
characteristic plant of the season, representing the true laurels. 
Our so-called mountain laurel, of course, is not a laurel at all. 
Our spice-bush is cousin of sassafras. Its stem and leaves are 
indeed spicy to the taste, and are often infused as a simple pallia- 
tive of fever. 
Providence, R. 1. 
