THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
2^ 
goes, come from Holland. I don't care for a fancy tulip*; 
give me the clear yellow chalice, a Holy Grail, or a 
crimson, or rose pink one. To some flowers the name 
gorgeous especially applies. It is so with tulips. One 
feels in looking at a bed of them as if he had walked into 
the court of the Grand Monarch. They appear to step in 
stately minuettes or graceful gavottes. They courtesy 
and bow with formal pause and progress. ' 
Such are some of the joys of my garden. They ari 
above politics and outside diplomacy. If, while we watcl?, 
a robin comes, too, and chants his sweet vernal hymn, w^ 
envy neither king nor bond^holder. These treasures are 
ours — * 
''All's right in the world !" 
Brown University, Providence, R. I. 
THE SIGN OF THE MOON. 
BY O. W. BARRETT. | 
YOUR note in the October American Botanist on 
"The Sign of the Moon," quoted from transcript of 
the American Institute of Mining Engineers, touches at 
sore spot. Here in Porto Rico we are confronted witH 
this detestable superstition concerning the weird influ^ 
ences of the front and hind quarters of our satellite,—^' 
affronted with it under so many forms and degrees of 
rationality that it gets on our nerves and makes us 
desperately long for its dissolution. ' 
It is bad enough to be obliged to wait for the proper 
change of the moon before cutting 3^our timber or a fence 
post to mend a gap in the fence, but it is worse to have to 
select the correct phase for harvesting your corn, planting 
your beans, setting your bananas, etc.; and when you are 
told that you must not cut your nails except in the 
"wane" of said orb under dire danger to j^our bodily and 
moral health, — we believe you are at liberty to form some 
striking conclusions. 
I am pleased to note that the engineer who recorded 
his convictions in the article in question actually realized 
