As the time for botanists has arrived when they will depart for some time from their work at home and walk over fields and into the forests to collect plants and flowers new to them, I have thought it would be interesting and useful to describe a box in which they may preserve for several days, the collected plants and keep them from shriveling, particularly if the same are quite large, and exceed in size the usual small collecting box. As I had one made to order and know by experience the valuable service it did me, I do not hesitate to recommend it highly. It is well known that many druggists buy their glycerine and castor oil in five gallon cans, for which, when empty, they have no further use. The botanist, therefore, may go to such a druggist, procure two of the above cans, if possible of heavy tin and with flat sides, have the tinsmith take off their upper parts and solder the cans together, after having cut out of each of them a rectangular piece as long and wide as necessary to give room for a door and after having trimmed any inside edges. The door is then made from the two pieces cut out, (or from a new piece) with the addition of several strips of tin, so that it may overlap and close tightly, and of the necessary hinges and hasp to open and fasten the door. One of the original wire handles of the cans is fastened in a similar manner as before on the top of the box and the preserving box is ready for use, as soon as it had received two coatings of asphaltum varnish inside and two of paint outside. Any vessel of suitable size and containing water should then be put into the box, which will furnish the moisture for the roots or the lower ends of the plants and at the same time for the air surrounding these. The dimensions of the box in question can easily be determined by the botanist himself, but for those not wishing to do so, I may be allowed to add, that the length of the box should be about twenty-five inches, the original width of the cans remaining unchanged. The door should commence at about three inches from the bottom, reach up to two or two and one-half inches from the top and have a width of six or six and one-half inches. _Cleveland, Ohio._ OHIO TUMBLEWEEDS. JOHN H. SCHAFFNER. Tumbleweeds are characteristic of wind-swept plains and dry prairies. As the forests are rapidly disappearing, the conditions in Ohio are becoming very favorable for the introduction and development of such forms of vegetation. A few species are already abundant and some like Amaranthus graecizans appear to flourish better than on the prairies of the interior. The past summer a number of cornfields about Columbus were covered with very large tumbleweeds and during the winter a number of hedgerows were filled with them, presenting an appearance quite as striking as anything the writer has seen along this line.