THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
55 
It is interesting in this connection to mention the fact 
that when a fire sweeps through a forest in which there are 
lodge-pole pines, the heat causes the cones to open within a 
short time after the fire has gone by, and the seeds are there- 
fore on the cleared ground very early. By next year there is 
a myriad of little pine seedlings on the ground, excluding 
and smothering out every other- thing. I have seen many 
such exclusive thickets of these young trees in the Yellowstone 
Park, where this tree is found in great abundance, often to 
the complete exclusive of not only all other trees, but of every 
other kind of vegetation as well. 
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nehr. 
COMMON THINGS. 
BY M. F. BRADSHAW. 
T ET no one ever give over the study of botany for want of 
-L-i new material. True, a new plant to examine is the most 
delightful thing in the world, and nobody but a botanist quite 
knows all the pleasure of it. But, do we all know all about 
the everyday flowers of our gardens? Longing to botanize 
and not being able to get out into the wild country where 
my heart has been all the spring, I begun to look at the gar- 
den flowers with an eye to something besides their decorative 
beauty. Why not examine them all, just as if I had never 
seen them before and they were so strange that I must use the 
key? 
Well, the first lot I gathered numbered ten, and by the 
time I was through with them, looking carefully at every part 
with the help of a lens, my m.ind was made up ; I would study 
botany in the garden. Such lovely things I saw. I was filled 
with delight, and then I learned some new features that I had 
never observed before. For instance, in the Geranium family. 
They are among the common things here, and there are now 
in bloom the zonale, the ''Lady Washington", the ivy leaved, 
