1900] Fernald, — Some Jesuit influences upon our flora 137 
water-fall. Seventy miles to the northeast, at Island Falls on the 
Mattawamkeag river, at the foot of the rocky island, which, with the 
falls above it, has furnished the name for a prosperous young town, the 
spray-showered ledges are bright with the alpine bilberry ( Vaccinium 
caespitosum), Kalm's lobelia, and this hawkweed ; and below a wild 
fall in the Penobscot, not far from the Indian village at Oldtown, the 
plant abounds in a similar situation. 
Along the northern rivers and shores, then, from Labrador and 
Newfoundland through Gaspé and eastern Quebec and thence south 
into New Brunswick and Maine, there are these common European 
plants, most of which are more or less introduced into the thickly 
populated regions as roadside weeds. Observers and authors have 
treated these plants in various ways. As already noted, Michaux and 
Pursh doubtless considered the mugwort native, and Asa Gray says it 
is “apparently indigenous at Hudson's Bay, etc." though south of 
that region he considered it only an introduced plant. The campion, 
save on a few herbarium-labels, is nowhere recorded as indigenous. 
The field sow-thistle has usually been treated as an introduced weed, 
but, on the other hand, the hawkweed is pretty generally accepted as 
native. It must seem quite clear that, if the mugwort and the hawk- 
weed are native plants, the campion and the field sow-thistle, growing 
with them or under the same conditions, must likewise be so regarded.! 
Here, though, we encounter the question, what is an indigenous 
plant? In the Old World, where through ages the mingling of races 
has spread many plants from one end of the continent to the other, 
this must often be an unanswerable question ; but in our own country 
there is at least one criterion, that of history, which may generally be 
applied. It is true that in the broadest sense we may not say what is 
native, for through the geological ages there has been a constant 
shifting of life from one place to another; and even to-day we may 
1 Other species of the same or more restricted range are seemingly indigenous, 
for example: Ranunculus hederaceus along Quiddy-Viddy Lake, etc., and Nardus 
stricta and Triodia decumbens on Rennies River, Newfoundland; Tussilago Farfara 
on river-banks, even well among the mountains, northern New England; Achillea 
Ptarmica, which “looks like a native at River Charlo, Restigouche Co., and Kouchi- 
bouguac, Kent Co." New Brunswick; Gnaphalium sylvaticum, by streams, on 
muddy banks, and in clearings, northern Maine, New Brunswick and Cape Breton; 
and Veronica arvensis, in springy spots along the Aroostook and the Penobscot 
rivers. These and several others not here listed may have had the same origin as the 
northeastern colonies of campion, etc. 
