1900] Fernald, — The bilberries of New England 189 
hill where the dwarf bilberry thrives, is the northernmost station in 
Maine for the southern species, Polygala polygama and Corylus ameri- 
cana. In the valley of the upper St. John, however, from the mouth 
of the Madawaska river westward, Vaccinium caespitosum reaches its 
greatest development in Maine. There it is one of the common blue- 
berries, covering acres of gravelly shore and hillside pasture. The 
fruit is gathered as “Indian blueberry”; though, on account of its 
habit — the berries solitary or few, and drooping from the axils — it 
is less easily picked than the equally common V. canadense, 
Little is known of the distribution of Vaccinium caespitosum in 
New Brunswick, save in the St. John valley, but further exploration 
will doubtless show it to be as frequent there as in Maine. There 
are many large areas in Maine, too, where the plant has not been 
noted, as the thickly populated section between the Sandy river and 
York. Here, as in New Hampshire and Vermont, the species is 
probably much more common than has been supposed. The com- 
rarely a foot high, and with 
parative insignificance of the shrub, 
drooping flowers and fruits hidden by the leaves, — as well as the 
prejudiced opinion that it should be looked for only upon alpine sum- 
mits, has tended to keep the plant an unknown species in regions 
where it may abound. At any rate, its comparative frequency 
throughout Maine, from latitude 44° 50’ northward, and its absence 
from Labrador, north of Chateau Bay and Hamilton river (latitude 
54?), are sufficient evidence that the dwarf bilberry is a boreal or 
Canadian plant, though of rather limited distribution in the East. Its 
occurrence on the alpine summits of a few mountains, and not on the 
lower treeless slopes, is not readily explained ; but that several common 
species of our lowland woods — the bunchberry, Cornus canadensis, 
etc., — thrive upon the alpine summits with Diapensia, Cassiope, and 
Bryanthus, is a fact well known to all students of the New England 
mountain flora. Vaccinium caespitosum, then a plant of somewhat 
extended lowland range, should be classed, apparently, with Cornus 
canadensis, rather than with the arctic-alpine Diapensia, Cassiope, and 
Bryanthus which, in our latitude, cling exclusively to the alpine peaks. 
With the common mountain bilberry, Vaccinium uliginosum, the 
case is quite different. This species, as already stated, abounds 
above timber-line on practically all the higher mountains of New 
England, sometimes on peaks of scarcely 2,000 feet altitude. It is in 
no sense confined merely to the * pinnacles,” as is the tendency with 
