70 Rhodora [March 



now, to that at Lacy, New Jersey — a dry, 1 open, sandy, undulating 

 slope, bearing scattered, scrubby thickets, backed by low trees, and 

 descending into a bog along a streamlet 



Prof. Fernald writes me that " in New England the species is 

 emphatically one of the coastal sands and sterile rocky barrens, and 

 we should not expect to see it elsewhere. All of our material comes 

 from the southern tier of states or from the sand-plain areas of the 

 interior extending inland and northward to the sands about Lake 

 Chaniplain, the sandy shores (along with Hudson in, Poh/gonella &c.) 

 of the Winnepesaukee and Ossipee region and the sandy plains of 

 southwestern Maine, as well as the sand-plain of the Ilousatonic and 

 Connecticut valleys." 



Dr. N. L. Britton, in two papers on the flora of the Kittatinny 

 Mountains, in calling attention to the existence there of sand-plain 

 types, many years ago recognized this species as a sand-loving plant, 

 and although at that time supposing it to be conspecific with PrutlUf 

 pumila, which is " more commonly found on sandy river shores, though 

 not a coastal plant," " he nevertheless associated it, and quite correctly, 

 as a further knowledge of our Coastal Plain flora has shown, with 

 "plants whose ordinary habitat is in sandy soil near the Atlantic 

 Coast." 2 



That this little Sand Cherry is frequent in the sand-plain areas of 

 New England and very rare in southern New Jersey may possibly 

 be a ease parallel in some measure to the abundance of such species as 

 Sabatia dodecandra, Coreopsis rosea, Chrysopsis faleaia in the New 

 England areas having a Coastal Plain flora, and their comparative 

 infrequence in south Jersey! — not a case of plants of similar distribu- 

 tion but plants which are definitely sand-loving and might be supposed 

 to occur in increased abundance in the extensive sands of the Coastal 

 Plain. 



Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 



i The rather frequent insistence, in manuals and floras, of a moist rather than a dryish hahitat 

 is perhaps worthy of comment. This may be correct, without doubt, for some portions of 

 the range, possibly to the northwestward. Rut, though there is sometimes "sandy," "rocky," 

 "or among rocks" included, frequently the habitat noted docs not very satisfactorily describe 

 the usually dry, sandy, sterile or rocky situation in which the plant commonly occurs in the east. 

 In the volumes used in daily reference we find the species recorded from "moist, sometimes 

 rocky soil or meadows," "wet soil," "bogs and other cool land," "near lakes and about bogs or 

 other moist situations." 



' Britton, Hull. Torr. Rot. CI. xiv. 187 (1887). 



