1919] Fernald,— Ranges of Pinus and Thuja 65 
bog, the following species being found in many such swamps of north- 
ern Maine, New Brunswick or Gaspé: Selaginella selaginoides, Equise- 
tum palustre and E. scirpoides, Triglochin palustris and T. maritima, 
Scirpus pauciflorus and S. hudsonianus, Eriophorum viridi-carinatum, 
Carex gynocrates, C. chordorhiza and C. vaginata, Juncus stygius, Orchis 
rotundifolia, Calypso bulbosa, Microstylis monophyllos, Cypripedium 
hirsutum and C. parviflorum, Betula pumila, Caltha palustris, Geum 
rivale, Rhamnus alnifolia, Angelica atropurpurea, Veronica americana, 
Valeriana uliginosa, Galium palustre, and Lonicera oblongifolia. 
This long list of species is here entered because in Europe nearly all 
of them or their immediate European allies occur in the “low-moors,” 
and Warming, the father of modern ecology, correctly states that “ The 
water coming from low-moor is rich in calcium and potassium.” ! 
The Canadian “Cedar swamp" is, then, a phase of Warming’s calcareous 
* low-moor"; and every farmer in northern Maine and New Bruns- 
wick knows perfectly well that by clearing a “Cedar swamp” he will 
get a valuable addition to his tillable acreage, but, wherever Pinus 
Banksiana grows the farmer knows it is useless to attempt cultivation. 
In fact, even the most ignorant “habitant” will argue that whenever 
that pine (“ Cyprés," as he calls it) takes possession it makes the region 
sterile, and so powerful is its sterilizing influence that it is considered 
positively dangerous for a pregnant woman even to walk near a 
Banksian pine! 
The law that some plants are oxylophytes, some calcicoles, is “as 
old as the hills" and it is just as true today as it was when Linney 
wrote of Kentucky: “ Altitudes had little, here, to do with the distribu- 
tion of the trees; only two natural conditions seem to have modified 
their disposition: one of minor importance — the quantity of mois- 
ture; and the other of much consequence — the character of the 
soil" ;? or when that great geologist, J. W. Dawson, wrote: 
" Until the botanical geographer pursues his studies of distribution 
with a geological map in his hand, and a knowledge of the habitudes of 
plants in reference to soils, his labours will be to a great extent fruit- 
les. A little more lime or a little less alkali in the soil renders vast 
'regions uninhabitable by certain species of plants. For many of the 
plants of our Laurentide hills to extend themselves over the calcareous 
1 Warming, Oecology of Plants, transl. Groom & Balfour, 197 (1909). 
2 Linney, Bot. of Madison, Lincoln, Garrard, Washington and Marion Counties, Ky, 8 (1882). 
