THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
7 
Hawthorne especially loved the seclusion of Notch 
Valley and the Bellows-Pipe, and often ascended these 
ragged hills to dream the summer hours away. Many of 
these "day dreams " together with the voices' of the wild 
are interwoven among the rosy clouds and mountain 
echoes of his stories of "rough, broken, rugged, headlong 
Berkshire." It was his custom to ascend the Valley to 
Mount Hawks and Raven's Crag where, looking' far 
southward, he might behold the giant outline of Monu- 
ment Mountain immortalized by Bryant and later denom- 
inated by himself the "headless sphinx" in "Wonder 
Book." He usually descended tbe slopes of the southern 
Notch Valley to the old quaker Meeting-House and thence 
to the road near the South Village, where he would meet 
the Pittsfield and North Adams stage, and Piatt "a friend 
of mine", as he called the driver, gave him a ride to his 
Whig Tavern in the North Village of Adams. 
AIR PLANTS. 
BY DR. WILLIAM WHITMAN BAILEY. 
J UDGING from questions often addressed to me, I fancy 
there is much misunderstanding as to what consti- 
tutes an air plant. Indeed, some even suppose that there 
is one plant in particular that bears the name. This is 
not the fact. 
An air plant, speaking botanically, is one that derives 
its nourishment from the atmosphere. Usually such a 
plant is attached to some other vegetation, dead'or alive, 
which it merely uses for a support. It may almost as 
well be perched on rocks, and often is so situated. 
Science denominates plants of this habit— "^pipArtes" 
—that is, vegetables that live upon others. When this is 
said, however, parasitism is not meant to be implied. 
That is quite another thing and denotes theft, either open 
or clandestine. 
Air plants are formed in various families, in no other 
way perhaps, at all related . Thus the orchids, bromeliads, 
