1911] Fernald,— Expedition to Newfoundland 133 
quite different in their proportions from those of the ordinary plant. 
A study of the serpentine plant shows it to be O. regalis, var. pumila 
described by Milde and taken up by Luerssen as a constant varia- 
tion known only from Brandenburg and Silesia. 
Foot-travel in Newfoundland, except on the beaten trails and open 
tablelands, is notoriously difficult, and the Blomidon talus-slopes are 
no exception. At the end of the first day Wiegand had succeeded 
in bruising one of his feet so that next morning I started, accompanied 
only by our packer, a particularly foul-smelling “Jacky Tar” as the 
French of this coast are called, for the diorite tableland which lay a 
few miles to the west of our camp. It was necessary practically to 
climb the slope of the intermediate serpentine tableland, then to 
descend 1500 feet to the bed of Blomidon Brook and up the other 
side which was diorite. The freshly broken talus was slightly cal- 
careous and had some of the common calciphiles, but the weathered 
rock from which the soluble lime had leached was carpeted in patches 
with the plants we are used to on our granitic mountains, and Phyl- 
lodoce caerulea was here seen for the first time in the entire summer 
and Stipa canadensis was apparently new to the island. Here were 
no signs of the plants of the serpentine which abounded only a 
short distance to the east, and much of the tableland was wooded and 
covered with a dense carpet of moss and humus. Ponds and shallow 
pools were everywhere and I was glad to find in one of them Calli- 
triche anceps Fernald‘ which was discovered in 1906 in ponds on Table- 
top Mountain, ‘Gaspé, and which we had found also in Blane Sablon 
River. Drosera anglica was common as were many plants which 
earlier in the summer had been quite new to us; but the species which 
interested me most were two which seemed entirely out of place in 
- this subalpine habitat. Among the tufts of Scirpus caespitosus which, 
as on many similar barrens, formed broad carpets in the drier por- 
tions of the bogs, was the famous little fern of the New Jersey Pine 
Barrens, Schizaea pusilla, already known in Newfoundland from col- 
lections of la Pylaie, Waghorne, and Eames & Godfrey and after we 
had once seen it found wherever we looked for it; also known at remote 
stations in Nova Scotia, but quite unknown between there and south- 
ern New Jersey. Here at 2000 feet altitude it abounded over many 
acres, nestling in the bases of the Scirpus tussocks; while in many 
1 RHODORA, X. 51 (1908). 
