112 Rhodora | JULY 
informed, no special publication has ever been made upon their col- 
lection of flowering plants and ferns. In July and August, 1908, 
two members of the New England Botanical Club, Drs. Edwin H. 
Eames and Charles C. Godfrey, spent nearly a month in southwestern 
Newfoundland, between Port aux Basques and the Bay of Islands, 
bringing back about 400 species, 50 of them previously unknown from 
the island. Their results were published in Ruopora ! for May, 1909. 
This, so far as I am aware, summarizes briefly the more important 
botanical work in Newfoundland up to the past summer. ‘The reasons 
for this rather meagre record are numerous and, when we look into 
the history of the colony and realize that until very recently the 
people of the island have all depended upon the sea, readily understood. 
But I imagine that with most of us who spend our summers on shore 
one of the most important reasons for neglecting Newfoundland has 
been a failure to appreciate how readily accessible is this island of 
Terra Nova which has so long remained to botanists a Terra Incognita 
as well. Few of us realize that Newfoundland is about 350 miles 
across from east to west and approximately the same from north to 
south (farther than from Boston to Quebec or about as far as from 
Boston to Baltimore) and contains 42,200 square miles; i. e. is larger 
than the island of Cuba or two thirds as large as New England. When 
this immense area is taken into account it will be readily admitted 
that, in spite of the notes already published, the flora of Newfoundland 
as a whole has been among the least known of any flora in civilized 
America. 
And so, in the hope of learning something more of the region and 
of comparing the flora with that of the mainland and Anticosti Island 
on the western side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the expedition of 
1910 was organized. 1 was fortunate in having as companions 
Professor Karl M. Wiegand, who had accompanied me on a previous 
summer's campaign, Mr. Joseph Kittredge, Jr., one of my students, 
who went as general assistant but soon proved so efficient that he was 
doing original exploring, and Mr. Alfred V. Kidder, an archaeologist 
and ethnologist, who represented the Peabody Museum of Harvard 
University. 
Our first sight of Newfoundland was the conventional one, but none 
the less thrilling and picturesque. Upon rising early on the morning 
1 E. H. Eames: Notes upon the Flora of Newfoundland, Ruopona, xi. 85-99 (1909). 
