Genre:

Regular Feature—Anecdote, Drollery

Subjects:

Botany, Universities, Amusement, Piety

    Recounts a droll tale concerning a 'graduate from the Sheffield Scientific School, who was so greatly interested in botany' that he 'spent a winter in Western Connecticut, where he boarded with a clergyman's family'. At first, the graduate was assisted in his botanical studies by the minister's little daughter, but she was 'scandalised almost into hysterics' when he declared that '"a blasted woodpecker" had destroyed the bark of a rare and beautiful tree'. Later, she tells the graduate of a particularly lovely calla lily that she had owned, explaining that '"it died last fall just because it was blasphemed by Jack Frost". She was too consistent to say it has been blasted'. (484)