12 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
that is still being carried on by astrologers and other 
fortune-tellers, dealers in dip-needles for finding treasure, 
and workers of various other games that depend for their 
success upon a credulous public, are proofs of this asser- 
tion. The realms of Nature have always furnished the 
monger of sensations with a free field for the play of his 
iuKi- - -i ^ excursions into these regions he has 
reti: -seri>ent, the unicorn, the roc, the 
bn r \vs on trees, the man-eating tree, 
tin number of other equally enter- 
t,'i! itmns. One after another 
sc T. 'newspaper science," the 
pr. ho would not know true 
SCI. . the wav, is ever ready 
wirli . . rtul stories to tickle our 
credulity. Nature is lull of wonders, but the wonders of 
the reporter's imagination so far outstrip the wonders of 
nature, that as a people, we still prefer the reporter's 
version. The best selling popular science is that in which 
animals think, act and often talk, exactly like human 
beings, and in which plants are endowed with instincts 
that properly belong to animals alone. Instances are so 
abundant in the lay press that scientific publications no 
longer take notice of them, but w^hen a publication devoted 
to science publishes such stories for the truth, it is time 
someone pointed out their falsity. From the February 
number of Floral Lite, a continuation ot'Meehan's Month- 
ly, we clip the following : 
DISCOVERING AN IRRIGATING ORCHID. 
journeys in South America to enrich the Kew (Uirdcns, 
near London, with new plants, reports the discover}- of ;i 
remarkable plant belonging to the orchid faniilv. The 
naturalist tells this story of his discovery : I was sitting 
one hot afternoon on the shore of a large lagoon in the 
neighborhood of the Rio de la Plata. I observed a 
number of leafless trees whose life had evidently been 
nearly absorbed by the growth of parasitic plants that 
