Among the pleasant readings in the American Agriculturist are always the notes of Prof. Thurber who when a younger man was one of the explorers of the unknown portions of our Continent. Every now and then he brings in some reminiscence of those earlier days, which make us wish he would give more of them. We extract the following in reference to a well known hardy annual as illustrative of what we mean:

" In the writer's horticultural experience it has happened that he has made the acquaintance of a number of plants in the cultivated state, and afterwards has met with them in their native localities, and, of course, growing wild. In the majority of cases the plants in cultivation were larger and more brilliant in their flowers than the same when growing wild. When we came to a water-hole on the road between El Paso del Norte and the City of Chihuahua, in Northern Mexico, surrounded by a thick growth of plants having bright, rose-pink flowers, we were glad to find it to be the same that we had known in cultivation as Hooker's Palafoxia, P. Hookeriana, and quite as large and as showy as we had seen it in gardens. The plant belongs to the Aster Family (Compositae), and bears numerous aster-like heads of flowers upon branching stems of 1 to 4 feet high. The flower-heads have pinkish, or rose-purple rays, making it a showy and pleasing hardy plant for the garden. The engraving of the upper part of a plant gives its general appearance.

Upon looking up what later botanists have had to say about this Palafoxia, a genus named in honor of a Spanish General, Jose Palafox, we find that the plant in question is not a Palafoxia, but has been placed in an allied genus, Polypteris, a name from the Greek words for many and wings, in reference to the structure of the pappus upon the fruit. The proper botanical name is Polypteris Hookeriana, but this will not prevent the use of Hooker's Palafoxia as its garden name. According to generally accepted rules, it sometimes becomes necessary to refer a species to a genus different from that in which it was originally placed. It is always to be regretted, as many find it more difficult to unlearn a name than to learn a new one".