cylindric, yellowish white, often tinged with red, with spreading segments. Filaments shorter and less hairy than in the last.

This is a common species, growing on high ground and most luxuriantly in the openings in rocky woods. The fruit is very sweet, the berries large and covered with a light bluish bloom. The flowers are much more richly colored than those of other species, and the plant has a more elegant appearance. It is distinguished from any variety of the last species, by the veins and ribs of its leaves being usually perfectly smooth. It is distinguished at once from the next species, by its pale green leaves and by being twice as high or more. The fruit-branches are two or three inches long or more, without leaves, sometimes several together on a stem, so that a large part of the plant seems leafless, but covered with fruit. The flowers open in May and June; the fruit is ripe in August.

Sp. 7. THE LOW BLUEBERRY. V. Pennsylvánicum. Lamarck.

A very low and much branched undershrub, covering the ground in extensive beds, on open, level pastures or in high pine woods. The branches are a little angular, with the bark of a light green, closely set with white, raised dots, and with a hairy line running down on each side. The leaves are sessile, oval-lanceolate, acute at both ends, thin, finely serrate, shining on both surfaces, with the margin and mid-rib hairy under a microscope. The fascicles of flowers are terminal, or on the upper part of the branches, while the leaves are below. The bracts are often scarlet. The teeth of the calyx are green, acute, and spreading; the corolla is white, often with a reddish tinge; style equaling or surpassing the corolla; filaments short, rather hairy. The berries are blue, with a glaucous bloom, and very

sweet.

From its situation and exposure, the berries ripen earlier than those of any other species. They are soft, and easily bruised and injured in bringing to market, and liable, when in mass, to speedy decay. They are, therefore, less valued in market than those of some other species, though they are very delicious and not liable to the objection which is made to the black whortle

berry on account of its numerous, stony seeds. They are particularly suited to be preserved by drying, and, when prepared in that way, are equal in value to the imported currants, as an ingredient in cakes and puddings.

There is a variety of this whortleberry growing in the same situations and forming like it large beds, distinguished by its leaves of a darker green and shining black berries.

This lowest and earliest of the blueberries delights in a thin, sandy soil, and carpets the ground in the openings in the pitch pine woods, with beds of rich, soft green, which in May and June are decked with a profusion of beautiful flowers; in July and August are loaded with delicious fruit, and in October turn to a deep scarlet and crimson. Its rich, tender fruit feeds immense flocks of wild pigeons and numberless other animals. It is a peculiar blessing to the arid and otherwise barren, sandy plains, and helps the poor inhabitants, especially in seasons of scarcity, to eke out their bread-corn, to which it makes a wholesome and most agreeable addition.

Sp. 8. THE COWBERRY. V. vitis idea. L.

This plant, so far as I know, occurs in only one spot in Massachusetts, which is in a pasture in Danvers, where it was found by Mr. Oakes in 1820, or before. It has some resemblance to the cranberry, but the leaves are larger and the branches larger and shorter. It has a creeping, woody root, with ascending angular branches a foot or more long. The leaves are coriaceous and shining, like those of box, but darker. The flowers are pale pink, four-cleft and with eight stamens. berries are blood-red, acid and austere. In the north of Europe, where it abounds, it is used as the cranberry, but is inferior; formed into a jelly, it is thought superior to currant jelly, as a sauce for venison or roast beef, or as a remedy for colds and sore throats.

The

XXI. 2. THE CRANBERRY.

OXYC
OXYCOCCUS.

Persoon.

A genus of three North American species, one of which is also European, of creeping or rarely erect plants, with small, alternate, evergreen leaves, and red berries of a pleasant, but extremely acid taste. The calyx is four-toothed; the corolla has four long, narrow, revolute segments; the stamens are eight, with tubular, two-parted anthers; the berry is four-celled and many-seeded. The erect species grows on the highest mountains of Carolina, and bears transparent, scarlet berries, of an exquisite flavor; the other two species are found here.

Sp. 1. THE COMMON CRANBERRY.

O. macrocarpus. Pursh.

Figured in Barton's North American Flora, I, Plate 17.

Stem prostrate, creeping, near the surface of the earth, to the distance of two or three feet, and throwing out numerous, thread-like roots. Flowering branches erect, with flowers and fruit from the lower part of the shoot, or sarmentose, and erect at the extremity, the bark on the older shoots shivering off in threads, smooth, or sometimes downy, recent ones light brown.

Leaves on very short footstalks, oval, oblong, entire, or with distant, indistinct teeth, sometimes minutely downy at the end when young, revolute at the margin, green above, whitish beneath, seldom half an inch long. Flower-stalk thread-like, in the axil of a shortened leaf, an inch long, reflected at the end, downy, with two small, ovate, pointed bracts at the flexure, beyond which the footstalk is more attenuated, downy and green.

Flowers nodding, calyx short, persistent; corolla pale-red, very long, revolute; anthers projecting, very long, somewhat downy below, divided above into two tubes, which open by a somewhat oblique pore.

Fruit of a bright scarlet color, globular or pear-shaped, with the four blunt teeth of the calyx adhering to it; four-celled, with numerous seeds attached to the central division. It often remains on the vine through the winter, so that it is not uncommon to find flowers and mature fruit on the same plant.

The cranberry is found in every part of the State, in large beds in boggy meadows. The berries are gathered in great quantities, and used for making tarts and sauce, for which purpose they are superior to any other article, especially as they have the advantage of being kept without difficulty throughout the winter. Their quality is much improved by being allowed to become perfectly ripe on the vines. Great quantities of the berries are exported to Europe.

Found from the Arctic sea-shore to New Jersey, and from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains.

Sp. 2. THE EUROPEAN CRANBERRY. O. palustris. Persoon.

This plant, which has been found by Mr. Oakes on Nantucket, in Pittsfield, and near Sherburne, has so near a resemblance to the common cranberry, that it would be taken by most persons for a small variety of it. It is distinguished by its very small, pointed leaves, rarely a fourth part of an inch in length, and the short ovate segments of the corolla. It is the common cranberry of the north of Europe, where it grows in turfy, mossy bogs, particularly on mountains. Its berries are applied to the same purposes as our cranberry, and great quantities are sent from Russia to the more southern countries.

XXI. 3. THE MOUNTAIN PARTRIDGE BERRY.

CHIO GENES.

Salisbury.

A North American genus of a single species. "The limb of the calyx is four-cleft; the corolla broadly campanulate, deeply four-cleft; stamens eight, included, inserted into the margin of the even disk; filaments very short and thickened, ovate, glabrous; anthers of two ovate-oblong cells, fixed by the base, not awned on the back; each 2-cuspidate at the apex, and opening longitudinally along the inside from the summit to below the middle. Ovary four-celled, free only at the convex summit; style slender. Fruit white, crowned with the limb of the calyx, four-celled, many seeded."-A. Gray:* from the manuscript of the N. A. Flora.

I owe it to the kindness of Prof. Gray that I have been allowed to copy from his manuscript, the above generic description, which fixes, for the first time, the

C. hispidula. Gray.

An evergreen plant, with a woody stem, creeping on the earth or beneath the decayed leaves, within deep, shady woods, and sending out numerous, prostrate, filiform branches, rough with appressed, ferruginous bristles. The flowers are solitary, on short, recurved stems, in the axil of a leaf, with two ovate, concave, hispid bracts. Calyx of four pointed segments, surmounting the ovary and forming a part of the succulent berry. Corolla small, white, bell-shaped, somewhat four-sided. Berry white, eatable, juicy, and of an agreeable subacid taste, with a pleasant chequer-berry flavor. The whole plant has the aromatic taste and smell of Gaulthèria procumbens. The leaves are about one third of an inch long, nearly orbicular, acute at the end, rounded or acute at base, reflexed at the margin, smooth above, paler and scattered with stiff hairs beneath.

Flowers in May and June. Mr. Tuckerman tells me that this plant is abundant on the sides of the White Mountains, where it forms, with its creeping stems, large, thin mats, beneath which, when lifted up, the pleasant berries are found in luxuriant profusion. This plant evidently takes its place between Oxycoccus and Gaultheria, the former of which it resembles in habit, the latter in properties.

THE TRUMPET FLOWER FAMILY, Bignoniacea, a rather large family of trees, climbing shrubs and herbaceous plants, with large, trumpet-shaped, showy flowers, contains three genera,two Trumpet Flowers Bignònia and Tecòma and the Catalpa, which are somewhat extensively introduced as ornamental plants, but are not found growing naturally in this State, nor probably in any part of New England.

position of a plant, which, ever since its first detection, has been wandering from genus to genus, suing in vain for admittance at the gates of four old genera and two new ones, and at last obtaining, from his faithful examination of its case, a character, a habitation and a home, in a seventh.