serious trouble to the cultivator of the soil if efforts be made to cut away the young leaves before they mature. All plants store up food in their roots and stems through the agency of their fully developed leaves. Without food a plant can no more live than an animal. Prevented from storing food they must surely die. One correspondent narrates that he followed the suggestions in regard to cutting out this couch grass, and that he seems to have had only his labor for his pains. This only shows that he left his enemy until the leaves were mature enough to prepare some food from the atmosphere. It is often not easy, in the pressure of spring work, to attack weeds as early as it ought to be done. In this case it is better to do a little and to do it well, and leave some portion of the infested ground for another season. A corn crop is the best to give a chance to clear out those troublesome intruders, and after an early and thorough harrowing a boy is often sufficient to follow, in a few days, and cut away or dig with a knife the few straggling green blades that may start up, and which will, if suffered to mature a few green leaves, make all the earlier work of little account.

Of the newer weeds of recent introduction, the red chickweed is the only one that has been brought to the botanist's attention as spreading. The specimens are from Eastern Pennsylvania, where it is said to be so abundant as to be gathered in large quanities by the collectors for large drug dealers. These never know, when asked, for what purposes their employers use the herbs. It has some reputation in European pharmacy in epilepsy and dropsy. It is, however, by no means a troublesome weed. Its common name in the old world is pimpernel, or poor man's weather glass. It closes sometime before rain. Botanically it is Anagallis arvensis, and has no relationship to chickweed, but to the primrose family, though the habit is much the same as a chickweed studded with bright red flowers would have.

More than usual attention is being given to the subject of hybridization in improving the races of fruits and flowers. It was long the belief that hybrids are sterile. This belief comes from the well-known fact that the product of the horse and the ass-the mule-is generally sterile. It is proper to say generally sterile, because there have been known cases of progeny between the female mules and the horse. But numerous experiments showed that this common case is rather an exception than the rule, and the truth is that hybrids in general are as fertile as other plants or animals. Since this has been demonstrated, renewed attention has been given to the subject. Mr. Carman, the proprietor of the Rural New Yorker, has raised fertile hybrids between wheat and rye, and between raspberries and blackberries, and there seems to be a wide field for experiments in the production of new grains and fruits. No one can tell beforehand what will cross successfully; it is a matter for experiment. There must be some relationship, but it is found that quite close relationship will have nothing to do with each other, while remote relationship will often unite and give good hybrids. In experimenting, it is very important that the flower should certainly have no use of its own pollen. It is waste of time to go on without this absolute certainty. To wait a year, or perhaps several, and then find the female parent plant reproduced exactly, through having accidently received its own pollen, is exasperating. In the closed flower, the anthers seldom burst and expose the pollen powder, but they usually do just before or just after opening.

It is therefore wise to open the flower artificially some hours before it would do it naturally, and cut away the anthers before they mature with the point of a scissors. The stigma is usually not in receptive condition till some hours after the pollen matures. But the pollen desired for the male parent can be applied at once on the cutting away of the anthers. It will remain there till the pistil needs it, and, in this way, prevent other pollen from interfering with the views of the oper

ator.

The subject of the cross-fertilization of flowers, and, indeed, the whole subject of the fertilization of flowers, continues a subject of profound interest with scientific men. It is not so many years since the whole subject was a mystery. True, it has been known for many centuries that the date, the fig and other fruits required the flowers of one tree to exert some influence on the productiveness of another; but the exact process is a victory by modern science. Every intelligent person now knows that the organs in the center of a flower-the pistils-are the parts of the flower connected with the seed-bearing system, and that the organs next surrounding in most flowers are the stamens, the upper portions of which-the anthers-bear the pollen dust that gives life to the work of the pistils. Only by the contact of this pollen with the upper portion of the pistil-the stigma-can seed result. But pollen will not always act. Very often pollen from the same flower is of no account; pollen from some other flower will be active when its own pollen is inert. Mr. Darwin held that foreign pollen is always better than own pollen, and that it is for this reason that so many flowers are arranged that it is only with great difficulty the plant can make use of its own pollen. It is more convenient to get pollen from another flower by means of an insect seeking honey than to make use of its own. This view is undoubtedly true in the main; but it seems to your Botanist to have been pushed too far. In the clover, for instance, it is well known that the first crop seeds but poorly; the second crop is usually relied on for seed. On the theory that insects are so necessary to cross-fertilize the flowers, it has been assumed that the necessary insects are scarce in the early part and abundant in the later part of the clover season; but if one will take the trouble to look at the clover fields, it will be found that bees and butterflies are equally abundant at either search. It will be found further that the humble bee does not enter the mouth of the flower, as it should do to effect fertilization, but slits the side of the flowers and extracts the sweets in that way. Humble bees in like manner slit the sides of all flowers that are tubular or offer any difficulty to a rapid rifling of their treasures by these creatures. Productiveness in plants only follows some check to vegetative vigor. No trees bear fruit until this vegetative vigor is checked. It may be done by some slight injury, such as root pruning or ringing the bark, as well as by age. When this check occurs, the plant is reproductive. It is the check given by mowing off the first crop of clover that makes the second reproductive, and not any action of insects in cross-fertilizing. This seems to be better understood with each recurring year. Much of the trouble with the light crops of fruit following an abundance of flowers, referred a few years ago to matters connected with fertilization of the flowers, are now referred to questions connected with the vegetative and reproductive forces.

Many questions connected with forestry reach your Botanist. Trees are often somewhat nice in their requirements. The failures occasion

ally reported often come from the soil not being suited to the kind, or from some other conditions being unfavorable to that species of tree. The Larch and the Norway spruce, two very profitable timber trees in the high northern or elevated regions of Europe, have been planted extensively in our flat prairie lands, where the long summer heats are distasteful. When they failed, the trees have been set down as unfavorable to American forestry. Again, some species are more liable to the attacks of insects or of fungus parasites in some localities than others. All these things have been better studied the past year than ever before. As a rule, the various species of oak are less liable to disease or insect attacks than any other, and the white pine among the soft woods is the most generally satisfactory. In planting forests, the trees should not be set very close, or there will be a struggle for food and growth will be slow. On the other hand, if set too wide, the tree will develop strong side branches, and we shall not get the much desired long straight trunk.

The question of the vitality of seed has several times come before your Botanist. Many people note that when a forest is cleared, another kind of tree often proceeds, and people seem to believe that the seeds of the new growth have either been lying in the soil for ages, or that the trees spring up from the ground wholly independent of seed. It cannot be admitted that anything in these latter ages can spring from the earth independently of seed. We can only consider how the seeds get here to introduce the new growth. It can readily be shown that the seeds are not in the ground. Larger seeds, like nuts and acorns, can readily be detected. A few shovelfuls of earth put into a tub of water well stirred up, and then allowed to settle, will have all the vegetable substance deposited on the surface. For smaller seeds, half a jar of clay in water shaken up, will do as well. Your Botanist has never been able to find any seed under such trial. If, however, a piece of wood is examined before the trees are cut down, very often numbers of little trees may be found in a dwarf and half-starved condition, remaining for years but a few inches high, and seeming to the observer to be but part of the ordinary dwarf vestage of the general forest undergrowth. When the forest is cleared off, these little seedlings at once start up into the successional growth. This can be noted by any one who will take the trouble to examine an old forest before the trees are cut down. The larger seeds are brought by crows, and other members of the animal kingdom, in order to be eaten more at leisure, and the smaller seeds are brought there by high winds. It is, however, true that seeds often will live a long time in the earth, or anywhere, where a continuous low temperature is maintained; evidence satisfactory to the author of this report, by his investigations in Alaska, satisfies him that both plants and seeds will exist for many years in a dormant condition under glaciers, growing when the glaciers recede; and many facts are uncontestable, where some flowers and vegetables in gardens continue to appear for perhaps a dozen years after the original plants seeded in the ground.

In sending plants to the botanist for name, they are often sent just as gathered, merely rolling them in paper, or putting them loose in a box. They come rotten, and scarcely distinguishable. They should be pressed dry between thicknesses of paper, and then sent flat between pasteboard covers. It is a pleasure to reply to all inquirers when the material is good, but a sad waste of valuable time to both