fertilization in the vegetable kingdom. Several species of Lycopodium are now in their prime, and the brake is ripening its spores and scattering them as widely as it can. Here and there a late hawkweed shows its yellow flowers, and the artichoke run wild lifts its sunflowerhead in the copse. Thorn-apples, coarse and rank, have taken possession of neglected gardens in rivalry of the sow-thistle and its kindred.

When the fringed gentian and the witch-hazel come we know that the summer is passed. The leaves have fallen or are falling. The naked branches of the witch-hazel, adorned with the thickly-clustered flowers of yellow strap-shaped petals, present a weird appearance. It, too, is hopeful of another year, of another returning sun to complete the work which is this season left unfinished. It looks through the dark abyss of winter to the warm sunny skies beyond. Shall we be less brave or less hopeful?

APPENDIX A.

FLORA OF WORCESTER COUNTY.

A CATALOGUE

OF THE

PHÆNOGAMOUS AND VASCULAR CRYPTOGAMOUS

PLANTS OF WORCESTER COUNTY,

MASSACHUSETTS.

SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED.

1894.

PREFACE.

IN the autumn of 1883 I prepared for publication the first Catalogue of the Plants of Worcester County, Massachusetts, containing eight hundred and twelve species and well-marked varieties. In the meantime, by the kind and generous help of many friends, all of whom will understand, I hope, that whether their names appear in these pages or not, my sense of obligation to them is here fully acknowledged and gratefully remembered, more than two hundred additions have been made.

This Catalogue, revised and enlarged, is now issued in the hope that it may serve as a basis for still further additions, so that, in due time, our county may have its flora as fully recorded as possible. Its main purpose is to help and to encourage the beginner and to afford pleasure to those who take an interest in untamed and unpruned Nature.

Much yet remains to be done. The mosses, lichens, fungi and algæ furnish a wide field for the coöperation of workers in different parts of the county for some years. The yearly increasing interest in such work and the greatly increased facilities for prosecuting it are hopeful signs of its accomplish

ment.