stem, the lower ones long-petioled, help us to identify this common weed. With splendid, vigorous gesture the COW-PARSNIP (Heracleum lanatum) rears itself from four to eight feet above moist, rich soil from ocean to ocean in circumpolar regions as in temperate climes. A perfect Hercules for coarseness and strength does it appear when contrasted with some of the dainty members of the carrot tribe. In June and July, when a myriad of winged creatures are flying, large, compound, many-rayed umbels of both hermaphrodite and male white flowers are spread to attract their benefactors the flies, of which twenty-one species visit them regularly, besides small bees, wasps, and other short-tongued insects, which have no difficulty in licking up the freely exposed nectar. The anthers, maturing first, compel cross-fertilization which accounts for the plant's vigor and its aggressive march across the continent. A very stout, ridged, hairy stem, the petioled leaves compounded of three broadly ovate, lobed and saw-edged divisions, downy on the underside, and the great umbels, which sometimes measure a foot across, all bear out the general impression of a Hercules of the fields. FOOL'S PARSLEY, or CICELY, or DOG-POISON (Aethusa cynapium), a European immigrant found in waste ground and rubbish heaps from Nova Scotia to New Jersey and westward to the Mississippi, should be known only to be avoided. The dark bluish-green, finely divided, rather glossy leaves when bruised do not give out the familiar fragrance of true parsley; the little narrow bracts, turned downward around each separate flower-cluster, give it a bearded appearance, otherwise the white umbel suggests a small wild carrot head of bloom. Cows have died from eating this innocent-looking little plant among the herbage; but most creatures know by instinct that it must not be touched.