“ie iai PIONEER eee OO) JSS MET GL. LLLA M 
P dde. BEE ES lc x D 
1915] Book Review 65 
knowledge of the rapidly altering geological conceptions that few, if 
any, thorough botanists can be in position to offer more than tenta- 
tive explanations. This Mr. Taylor clearly realized. But the first 
fundamental requirement for satisfactory generalization upon the 
origin of a flora is a profound and thoroughly exact knowledge of the 
plants, their habitats and ranges; and the second fundamental re- 
quirement should be precision in the exacting art of compilation. 
These requirements have, apparently, not been sufficiently realized 
either by the author or his advisors. At least, it is somewhat startling 
to find, on page 4, in the list of characteristic bog plants Panicum 
linearifolium and Aster spectabilis listed along with the real bog species 
Arethusa bulbosa and Sarracenia purpurea. To be sure, in the Cata- 
logue we are told that Panicum linearifolium occurs in “dry soil” 
(p. 109) and Aster spectabilis in “dry sandy soil" (p. 612); but these 
correct statements of habitat were borrowed literally from Britton & 
Brown, not, it would seem, from the author’s experience. 
On page 5 begins a long list of “ Plants Found Exclusively North of 
the Moraine in Our Area,” introduced by a paragraph from which 
the inference is, that somehow this essentially northern flora has been 
thus delimited in its range through “the profound influence of the 
continental glacier." The list contains, however, such examples as 
Cryptogramma Stelleri and Arabis viridis, which occur in sheltered 
crevices or recently formed talus, chiefly of limestones and traps, and 
are in nowise inhabitants of glacial soils; dozens of species (such as 
Abies balsamea, Sparganium minimum, Carex diandra, C. novae- 
angliae, Xyris montana, etc., etc.) abounding in the woodlands, ponds 
or sphagnous bogs of the Magdalen Islands which “exhibit the most 
remarkable non-glaciated condition of any part of the eastern pro- 
vinces of Canada ";' and several species (Trisetum spicatum, Juncus 
trifidus, etc.) which are found on the high wnglaciated Torngat Moun- 
tains of Labrador? Incidentally, it may be noted that the “Juncus 
trifidus" of Taylor's Catalogue is the var. monanthus, by some Euro- 
pean students treated as a distinct species and in this country occupy- 
ing a strikingly different range from true J. trifidus; but how these 
plants and some scores of others in the enumeration (including the 
Dwarf Mistletoe, parasitic on Spruces and Larches) have had their 
present distribution determined by “the profound influence of the 
continental glacier" is not made clear. 
In the long list just referred to Taylor indicates by an asterisk those 
plants which “have been found only at elevations in excess of 1,000 ft.” 
This subgroup contains such plants as Carex castanea (“only . . . .from 
" Salisbury, Conn." — p. 202); Ledum groenlandicum (* Conn. North- 
1 Chalmers, Geol. Surv. Can., Ann. Rep., n. s. vii. 48M (1895). 
?''[ was able to confirm Dr. Robert Bell in the proof....that an overwhelming 
general glaciation of the Torngats, such as occurred in the White, Green, and Adiron- 
dack Mountains, did not take place in the last glacial epoch.’’ — Daly, Bull. Geogr. 
Soc. Phila., iii. 210 (1902). 
