“Even the powdery chaff which I blew away in order to better reveal the larger morsels, proved to be the fine seed of various grasses and sedges; while among the more conspicuous which remained I noted the following considerable list, not to mention others which were then beyond my limited botanical knowledge. The seeds of the alder, birch, hemlock, ragweed, bur-marigold, and wild-carrot, were, perhaps, the most numerous and general. There was an exclusive colony of dried grapes assembled in one particular corner, doubtless laying their plans for a future arborescent monopoly of the rails in their vicinity. I found, also, numbers of larch seeds, both with and without their wings. Stag-horn-sumach, poison-ivy, ash, and hop-hornbeam representatives were frequent, and one chaffy handful, downy with goldenrod and aster seeds was lit up with a bright scarlet berry of black alder, like a tiny live coal in a bed of ashes. There was an occasional withered poke-berry to be met with, also fruits of sheep-berry, _ampelopsis_, juniper, and hawthorn. Another sample challenged my audacious familiarity with the fangs of a _Cenchrus_ bur--the spiny fruit of the hedgehog grass, and still another was pretty well doctored with the poisonous seeds of stramonium, or jimson-weed, a line of which followed along the base of a drift like an open trail fuse of blasting powder leading up to a drill hole well calked with chaff. I recall also a few samaras of the tulip-tree, some hazel-nuts, oats, foxtail-grass seed, as well as several other queer diminutive forms which were unknown to me at the time, and which I cannot now identify from memory.”