136 Rhodora [Jury 
cium vulgatum. Early in this century the sow thistle was seen in New- 
foundland, and in their recent explorations on that island, Dr. Benjamin 
L. Robinson and his companion, Hermann von Schrenk, found it on 
“ gravelly banks in Salmonier River, exclusively with native plants as if 
indigenous.” In northern Maine, too, this plant grows in just such 
situations. It is tolerably common on the St. John from the St. 
Francis, where it grows on gravelly banks with the alpine cinquefoil 
(Potentilla tridentata), to the mouth of Violette brook, where, at Van 
Buren, it abounds with such species as the Huronian tansy, the spurred- 
gentian, and the ever-present campion and mugwort. Unlike the 
latter species, however, the field sow-thistle, in its apparently native 
range in Maine, is not restricted to the St. John waters. It is locally 
abundant on the calcareous-slate cliffs and the gravelly shores of the 
Piscataquis in north-central Maine, growing luxuriantly by a water-fall 
with native shrubs and herbs. About Bras d'or Lake in Cape Breton, 
too, it is one of the commonest and most beautiful plants. When 
warned by the government botanist that they should eradicate what 
might quickly become a pest, the settlers replied that to them and 
their grandfathers the plant had always been known as a harmless 
species confined to the lake-shore. Yet this same sow-thistle, like the 
campion and the mugwort, is, in southern New England, a frequent 
weed by roadsides and in cultivated fields, where it has been recently 
introduced from Europe. 
The hawkweed (Hieracium vulgatum), so far as known, has shown 
little tendency, like its cousins the orange hawkweed and the famous 
king-devil weed, to court civilization. Wherever found in the north it 
has been on shores or rocky banks, and not in cultivated or thickly 
settled regions. It grows on the Labrador coast, and according to 
Professor Macoun it is **frequent along river margins on Anticosti, and 
along the Gaspé coast from Cape Rosier to Matane; also on the 
heights of Point Levis. . . . It is probable that this species is common 
on both sides of the Lower St. Lawrence and along the shores of the 
guif. It is certainly indigenous." In Newfoundland, Robinson and 
von Schrenk report it * in crevices of rocks by swift streams and water- 
falls; Holyrood, and the cataracts of the Rocky river . . . to all 
appearances indigenous." In Maine the plant is rare, but on the 
Piscataquis river a form identical with the Newfoundland plant occurs, 
with the bird's-eye primrose (Primula mistassinica), the bladder-fern, 
and other strictly indigenous plants, in the crevices of wet cliffs near a 
