44 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
eral inches across. This magnificent creature is painted with deH- 
cate shades and bands of oHve green and lavender, and is a joy 
to behold. The caterpillar is equally beautiful after the observer 
rids himself of inherited dread and prejudice. These moths ab- 
solutely swarm in certain years in Greater New York. We have 
never seen them in Rhode Island, though the tree is not infreciueni 
in our city streets, and is abundant about Narragansett Pier, 
Newport, and Seaconnet. 
Its tropical beauty has been spoken of. This is due to a cer- 
tain cjuaint and apple-tree-like pose of the trunks, and to the ample 
sumac-like pinnate foliage. These compound leaves are often 
two feet long. The fruit as it ripens, in most places, becomes 
yellowish and rather attractive. At Gloucester, Mass., and on 
Cape Anne generally, I have been surprised to see it of a magni- 
ficent red, as fine as that of the mountain ash. Salt air seems to 
affect color, as witness the superior brilliance of roses at Newport. 
The plants kept low, and grown with spiraeas, clethra, 
and other flowering shrubs form an exquisite border. 
Its German name is Gotter-baum, ''tree of the Gods," 
said to be a translation of it's Indian name, ailanto. The French 
call it Vernis du Japon. We occasionally observe trees thirty or 
forty feet in height. In Europe, where it has been grown longer, 
the tree is sometimes fully sixty feet high. The family Simaru- 
baceae to which the ailanthus belongs, has with us no other repre- 
sentative, though the rue, the prickly ash and even the orange and 
lemon are not distant relations. 
Brozmi University, Providence, R. I. 
An American lover of flowers, on visiting England for the 
first time soon notices two interesting facts, namely, that many of 
our favorite garden plants grow there by the road, while inside 
the wall not a few of our common wildings are carefully cherished 
in cultivation. Thus in an English countryside purple foxglove, 
Johnny- jump-ups and scabious are plebeians of the fence rows 
and pastures, while goldenrod and five-leaved American ivy and 
rhododendron are aristocrats of the gardens. — 6^. 
I 
