30 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
Templar, but there are no brother Knights to welcome 
him. Did the little stranger live in the forest, sweet with 
birch and fern, or did he bore a hole beneath the seat of 
some portico to astonish or alarm the sitters ? 
Wherever he came from, this Mr. Bumble, it does one 
good to greet him. He brings in the perfume of the 
meadow flowers. I seem to see the broad fields of glow- 
ing buttercups, "the little children's dower," the daisies 
nodding their starry heads, and the dandelions offering 
their golden disks. I should like to have the fellow stay, 
but no, he must be off. 
The persistent husbandman la\'s up in summer a 
surplus treasure for the rainy day. Old Bumble does the 
same. He thinks of the long winter, of the snows and 
storms, and must not loiter here. With a final whirr— 
which seems to affirm a new resolution— he dives through 
the open window and is lost in the blue of Heaven. 
THE PARTRIDGE PEA. 
BY WILLAKD X. CU'TK. 
QNE of the commonest weeds in eastern America, where 
^ the soil is sterile and dry, is the little partridije pea 
[Cassia chamiccrista). It begins to bloom in the 'north- 
ern part of its range in early July and tlicreafter is never 
without flowers until the frost cuts it down. Like many 
another .'io-called weed, its rei)utation for weediness is due 
entirely to its a})undance coupled with a lack <>U\-<nu>mk- 
[joints only, it will ])e found to fully equal in Ijeauty n'^any 
of the more pretentious exotics carefully cultivated' in ou'r 
garriens. Indeed, the plant is not infrecjuentlv planted for 
the sake of its graceful foliage anrl handsome vellow 
