1907] Fernald,— Soil Preferences of Alpine Plants 177 
Unfortunately, the data accompanying herbarium-specimens rarely 
indicates anything of the soil-characters of the habitats of plants; 
and, besides, these facts are not easily gained from extensive geological 
maps. Yet, if we examine the sheets issued by the Geological Survey 
of Canada, we shall find that in their range outside the areas specially 
under consideration the plants which we have been discussing show 
a selection of soils similar to that already pointed out. A few illustra- 
tions will make this point more clear. 
Empetrum nigrum, the Crow-berry or Curlew-berry, it will be 
remembered, is one of the commonest plants of the granitic, gneissic, 
and schistose mountains and coastal rocks of northern New England, 
New York, and eastern Canada. Outside of this area it abounds on 
the eastern coast of Newfoundland, throughout the Labrador Penin- 
sula, in Baffin Land and Greenland, and more or less across the Arctic; 
*along the north shore of Lake Superior, and at Port Arthur.... 
Thence it takes a northwesterly direction and is found in peat bogs, 
on exposed rocks along lake shores, and on barren grounds to the 
Pacific Ocean and Arctic Sea.”! From the Arctic it extends south- 
ward along the Coast Range to the region of Sitka; it is on the moun- 
tains of southern British Columbia, and very locally at isolated alpine 
or coastal stations southward. Many other characteristic plants of 
the eastern potassic rocks — Loiseleuria procumbens, Vaccinium 
uliginosum, V. Vitis-Idaea, var. minus, Rubus Chamaemorus, etc.— 
follow essentially this distribution and are unknown or of the greatest 
rarity along the Rocky Mountains. Others, however, such as Sib- 
baldia procumbens, are on the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountain 
system as well. Another group of these species is well represented 
by Vaccinium ovalifolium which, common on the potassic rocks of 
Gaspé, is unknown in the Arctic regions and the Rocky Mountains; 
but occurs from the Aleutian Islands to the mountains of Oregon, 
also in northern Michigan and in Newfoundland and southern Labra- 
dor. Still another group, represented by Arenaria groenlandica, is 
confined to Greenland, Labrador, the north shore of the St. Lawrence, 
the summit of Table-top, the coast of Nova Scotia near Halifax, the 
coast of Maine from the Mt. Desert region to the mouth of the Kenne- 
bec, the mountain-summits of northern New England and New York, 
a bleak granite slope below Middletown, Connecticut, and a few iso- 
1 Macoun, Cat. Can. Pl. i. 458 (1886) 
