I am progressing a little with my rather formidable task; in fact I am making haste quite slowly, and am now discussing the mysteries of exogenous and endogenous stems. I have studied little this week, for I found that close confinement was spoiling my health, so I have been taking quite severe exercise almost constantly, by which I am considerably improved already, although my bones ache prodigiously. I have not yet botanized largely. When at Bridgewater I secured all I could find of the new Carex; also C. chordorhiza, which, by the way, Crawe has found in his region. I hope soon to collect more extensively, but in this vicinity there are no plants of especial interest. I have just now a mania for examining and preserving the roots and fruits of our plants (I make notes of everything in a copy of your “Compendium”), and I hope to bring you a collection in this way which will interest, and perhaps be of some use to you. Fruits and ripe seeds are not often to be obtained, at least in a proper state, in our herbaria. I have been examining our Smilax rotundifolia. It is a regular endogenous shrub, although it sometimes dies nearly to the ground, but always sends out a branch from the uppermost node which survives the winter. It branches just as any endogen would, because the terminal bud is killed; the branches are cylindrical, and increase very little in diameter after their production. A cross-section shows the same structure as the rattan, i.e., the vascular and woody bundles are arranged equally throughout the stem. But a great part of the stem is prostrate beneath the surface, and it may be traced back, alive and dead, for several years’ growth. In fact I have not yet succeeded in tracing the stem back to the true root; all I have seen are adventitious roots sent of by the nodes of the stem. This is the only endogenous shrub, I presume, in the Northern States. By the way, the term rhizoma must be used much in descriptive botany, and be extended so as to include all subterranean, nearly horizontal stems, or portions of the stem, which produce roots from any part of their surface and buds from their extremity. It occurs in a great part of herbaceous perennials, and can always in practice be distinguished from the root, although it is still described as root in all the books; witness, Hydrophyllum, Actæa, Caulophyllum, Trillium, Convallaria, and so on to infinity.