THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
87 
and resume our acquaintance. When I mention it is twenty- 
five miles to the cottage — a remote, isolated place, and a 
full five miles farther to the place where the plant grew, and 
no way to get there but to drive ; a shut-up cottage to open 
and nothing to eat except what we took from home — well, 
you can credit us with some genuine interest in nature and 
her wondrous ways. 
This time there was a corolla, a microscopic thing, and 
crimson instead of yellow. Now, the color of the flower 
would scarcely be reason for throwing over the specific 
name given in the Botany of California, but why does not 
this work mention the extraordinar>- method of growing its 
seed? Since I have never read of this characteristic in any 
work on plants, I would like to know if any other known 
plant has it, and if anyone has found such a plant, where 
I can find an account of it. 
Orange, Cal 
THE CHOCOLATE PLANT. 
T^HE scientific name of the chocolate plant was one of 
those happy inspirations that much too infrequently 
attend the recognition of a nersv genus. TJveobrotna, food 
of the gods — it has all the requirements of a good title; it 
is s<>!iorous, euphonious, poetical, designative, suggestive, 
truthful. One of those few plants of beneficent quality, 
without which it would seem that its original possessors 
could in no way dispense, it had but to be discovered by the 
European, to, like tobacco, make itself necessary to the 
whole world. ''Breathes there the man with soul so dead" 
to choice flavors that he does not appreciate, and at times 
ever yearn for chocolate ? What a happy blending or inter- 
marriage of two tropical luxuries %vhen someone learned — 
