in observing the trunks, branches and buds of trees and shrubs. Winter is, however, the time pre-eminently fitted for herbarium work, preserving, mounting, labelling, cataloguing, and, if the necessary appliances are obtainable, laboratory work with the microscope.

The best place to begin collecting is where you live. Be your abode where it may there are surely some plant rarities near it, and the first goal to struggle for is a thorough knowledge of the resources of your own vicinity. When you have made a special study of the plants there you may easily extend your researches. If on your excursions you can have the company of some older botanist so much the better, since from him you can get the names of the plants you gather and the prominent characters on which the naming is founded. I would, however, strongly advise you always to take home one or two unnamed specimens, on which to practice analysis, for it is only by such practice you can ever become so familiar with the orders as to be able to, pretty nearly, locate strange ones at a glance. The accumulation of a mass of unnamed plants is to be avoided, lest a pleasant task become a wearisome labor, inspiring only disgust. Make it a rule to get your specimens named as soon as possible. If you have no one near to whom you can show them, enter into correspondence with some botanist and arrange with him to name the packets you may send him from time to time. You need not fear that your letter asking the favor will be unanswered. The wonderful spirit of fellowship, comradeship if I may call it so, existing among scientists, and evinced by their willingness to lend a helping hand to even the humblest votary, is to me one of the greatest charms in scientific pursuits. But here a word of warning, never send scraps of plants to be named, for though a good botanist can often identify them, it is unfair to ask him. His time is too valuable to be spent in guessing riddles. Courtesy also demands that in all correspondence the seeker after information should enclose stamps for return postage. In collecting a specimen for yourself, if it be at all rare, always, if possible, gather duplicates to be used in exchange. Under no consideration, however, obliterate a rare species from any locality, and do not even make its whereabouts known to any except true lovers of the science. There are vandals, who, through mere vanity, would not hesitate to destroy the last survivor of a species; nor would they do it only unthinkingly. From the duplicates of the best things around you a large

variety of plants can be got by exchange, and the pleasure and profit in making a collection is largely due to the intercourse thus brought about with those of kindred tastes. Nor is this confined to those in your own country; it is often necessary to have certain specimens from other regions, and you are thus brought into correspondence with scientists in all parts of the world. Let your specimens be well made, and never send away a poor one unless it be of something very rare. A man soon becomes known by his exchanges, and if his specimens are poor he is made the subject of much unpleasant criticism and will in time be avoided by all good collectors. Always preserve the choicest specimen collected for your own herbarium, but after this send the best you have to the first correspondent who asks for it. Keep even a fragment of any species not represented in your collection until you get a better, but of your duplicates destroy any too poor to send away. Do not hoard up duplicates. The man who studies science for science's sake would sooner give away every specimen for nothing than allow them to remain buried. like a miser's gold. Make sure that all plants you send out are correctly named, and notify your correspondent whether they are poisoned or not. Never promise a plant unless you actually have it or are positively certain of being able to get it, and keep a catalogue of your duplicates that you may be prepared at all times to answer a brother collector who applies for anything.

The last stage in botanical study, and the one to which all others should be only stepping-stones, is the working out of some of the many unsolved problems of plant life by independent and intelligent observation and experiment. The breadth of the field for exploration by original observation is immense, as comparatively little is known of the laws governing many of the phenomena of plants. For example, little is known of the hosts of some of our parasitic plants, and in some cases it is even disputed whether certain plants, commonly considered such, are parasites at all; though all plants move more or less, we possess scanty knowledge of the nature of this movement in many of them, and still less of its object; we know that cross-fertilization is generally necessary for the production of perfect seed, but in many cases we do not know the particular agents that perform the work; we are aware that cleistogene flowers produce pods. far more fruitful than the ordinary blossoms, but we know almost

nothing about the proportion of the kinds, or why a plant should be provided with two sorts of blossoms. There are many other points just as vague, hints as to which may be found in snch works as Darwin's "Climbing Plants," Bailey's "Talks Afield," Prentiss' "Mode of Distribution of Plants," and Kerner's "Flowers and their Unbidden Guests." Enough, however, has been said to show that the way to discoveries new to science is open to even the youngest student There is practically no limit to the papers that could be prepared by any of you for this or similar societies; papers both interesting and useful; papers of value to the scientific world at large; papers that any of our scientific journals would be only too glad to find room for. And here, in conclusion, I would say, that if within his means, and they are very cheap, no student of botany should neglect to take at least one of the periodicals devoted to the science. The "Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club," the "Botanical Gazette," and the "American Naturalist," are among the best. The first two are devoted entirely to botany, the last takes up other sciences as well.

If I have trespassed too much on your time, or wearied you with my effort to give an idea of how I think botany can best be studied, I pray you pardon me. Each of you who takes up this beautiful science will, I have no doubt, see modifications that you may think might be advantageously made in the method suggested. Should it be so by all means adopt them; the method employed is of little importance provided only it brings about the great aim and end of the study, which is to learn to observe and compare. Do this honestly and you cannot fail to become lovers of nature, and, being lovers of nature, better and happier men and women, men and women in some degree approaching that illustrious scientist of whom was said;

"And Nature, the old nurse, took

The child upon her knee,

Saying: 'Here is a story-book
Thy Father has written for thee.'

"Come, wander with me,' she said,
'Into regions yet untrod;

And read what is still unread

the manuscripts of God.'

"And he wandered away and away

With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe.

"And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail,

She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more marvellous tale."

EARLY HISTORY OF THE IROQUOIS.

BY DR. DEE.

(A Paper read before the Hamilton Association.)

The Iroquois achieved for themselves a more remarkable civil organization and acquired a higher degree of influence than any other race of Indian lineage excepting those of Mexico and Peru. In the drama of European colonization they stood for nearly two centuries with an unshaken front against the devastations of war, the blighting influence of foreign intercourse, and the still more fatal encroachments of a restless and advancing border population. Under their federal system, the Iroquois flourished in independence and capable of self protection long after the aborigines of New England and Virginia had surrendered their jurisdiction and fallen into the condition of dependent nations, and they now stand forth upon the canvas of Indian history, prominent alike for the wisdom of their civil institutions, their sagacity in the administration of the League, and their courage in its defence. When their power and sovereignty finally passed away, it was through the events of peaceful intercourse gradually leading to this result, rather than conquest or forcible subjugation. They fell under the giant embrace of civilization, victims of the successful warfare of intelligent social life upon the obstacles of nature, and in a struggle which they were fated to witness as passive and silent spectators. There is no connected history of the rise, progress and decline of this Indian league.

At the era of Dutch discovery (1609), the Iroquois were found in possession of the same territories between the Hudson and the Genesee rivers upon which they afterwards continued to reside until near the close of the eighteenth century. At that time the five nations into which they had become subdivided entered into a