1912] Field Excursions of New England Botanical Club 73 
mate number of sheets the herbarium should contain adequately 
to display the vascular flora of New England. Properly to embody the 
element of distribution in our calculations the ratio of one specimen 
of each species to every 100 square miles of area has been used: the 
figure is entirely arbitrary but has seemed to your committee a con- 
servative one. The figures given in column F are derived as follows 
from those of columns D and E. The plants represented by the 
figures in column E are of varying degrees of restriction. For in- 
stance, for Massachusetts such plants as the following have been 
included in this column: Desmodium grandiflorum, widely and almost 
generally distributed but unknown in the more silicious southeastern 
areas; Senecio obovatus, frequent in the western third of the state 
but rare eastward; Betula nigra, known only from the northeastern 
section; Solidago macrophylla, known only from Mt. Greylock; and 
obviously all plants of strictly coastal habitats. After considerable 
tabulation it has seemed reasonable to estimate that the plants of 
column E, the “local” plants, are found on the average over one tenth 
of the state. The figures in column F are, then, derived roughly by 
adding the figures in column D to those in column E divided by 10. 
In determining the number of species in columns D, E, and F one 
striking fact, which might readily be overlooked, has been clearly 
brought out: namely, that the larger the state or the more diverse its 
conditions the smaller the number of generally distributed species 
and the greater the number of local plants. Thus our largest state, 
Maine, with its fertile limestone Aroostook region, its alpine summits, 
and its sterile silicious southern counties, has only 604 generally 
distributed species (and the figure may prove too large) while, judging 
from the statements of ranges given in Brainerd, Jones and Eggleston's 
Flora of Vermont that smaller but more uniform state has about 950 
generally distributed species. 
A B C DT F G 
TP 
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Maine 21,937 | 50 | 33,040 | 50 | 2,100 | 604 | 1,496 750 | 248,000 | 47 
New Hampshire, 2,599 9,305 | 14 | 1,720 | 640 | 1,080 750 | 70,000 | 13 
Vermont 2,071 5| 9,565 | 14 | 1,724 | 954 | 770 | 1,000 | 96,000 | 18 
Massachusetts 13,715 | 32 8,315 | 13 | 2,445 | 448 | 1,997 650 54,000 | 10 
Rhode Island 802, 2 1,250 | 2 | 1,670 | 650 | 1,020 750 10,000 | 2 
Connecticut 2,279 5 4,990 7 | 2,228 | 868 | 1,360 | 1,000 50,000 | 10 
Total 43,403 | 100/66,465 | 100 | 528,000 ) 100 
