Gray gives as the range of the American species the “waters of the Western and Southern States; rare in the Middle States; introduced into the Delaware below Philadelphia.” Introduced by whom? The Indians are said to have carried it to the Connecticut Valley, where it still flourishes in circumscribed localities, and this I find is the impression in southern New Jersey and in the neighborhood of a little lake in the northern part of the State, where also the native lotus is found growing, but I have not yet found a positive statement to that effect. Rafinesque in 1830 remarked, “As it is scarce in the Atlantic States, it is said to have been planted in some ponds by the Indians.” The fact that the Southern and Western Indians valued the plant is significant. Nuttall records that “the Osages and other Western natives employ the roots of this plant, which is of common occurrence, for food, preparing them by boiling. When fully ripe, after a considerable boiling they become as farinaceous, agreeable, and wholesome as the potato. This same species ... is everywhere made use of by the natives, who collect both the nuts and the roots.” Early in the century it was growing in the meadows of the Delaware below Philadelphia, and Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton considered it indigenous. He says also that “efforts at cultivating this plant and multiplying its sites of growth have been unsuccessfully made in the neighborhood.” It is curious that Kalm, who gave so much attention to the food plants of our Indians, should not mention the lotus. It certainly could not have been at the time of his visit here (1748) a common plant, yet the lower Delaware, where a half-century later it was still found, was a locality about which he botanized with much industry. It is hard to believe that, had he once caught sight of its enormous leaves, often thirty inches in diameter, or seen the bright yellow blossoms on their towering stems, he would have omitted to make mention of such an experience. Kalm spent a considerable part of his time among his countrymen at Raccoon, now Swedesboro; and at Woodstown, but a few miles away, the native lotus grows luxuriantly, a relic, it is believed, of Indian water-farming.