IRbofcora 



JOURNAL OF 



THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 



Vol. 23. May, 1921. No. 269. 



CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE GRAY HERBARIUM OF HARVARD 

 UNIVERSITY.— NEW SERIES, No. LXIII. 



THE GRAY HERBARIUM EXPEDITION TO NOVA SCOTIA. 



1920 



M. L. Fernald 



(Plate 130) 



Part I. Journal of the Expedition. 1 



At first thought Nova Scotia would hardly occur to the student 

 of our vascular floras as a particularly inviting field for a summer's 

 expedition. The province is one of the longest-settled and most 

 visited regions of North America; the area best known to tourists, 

 "the Valley" (the valleys of the Cornwallis and Annapolis Rivers), 

 being closely cultivated and widely exploited as the "Evangeline 

 Land," the home of Nova Scotian farms and orchards. The wildest 

 region of the province, the northern half of Cape Breton Island, 

 geologically, physiographically and floristically very different from 

 Nova Scotia proper, has already attracted several discriminating 

 collectors and has been carefully treated, from the ecological view- 

 point at least, by Nichols, 2 whose work on the region has been called 

 "by far the most important ecological study yet made on the vege- 

 tation of northeastern America." 3 The veteran Government Natur- 

 alist, the late Professor John Macoun, repeatedly collected in all 

 parts of the province; and the local botanists who, in Nova Scotia 



1 Read before the New England Botanical Club, February 4, 1921. 



2 Nichols, The Vegetation of Northern Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Trans. 

 Conn. Acad. Arts and Sci. xxii. pp. 249-467 (1918). 



> Ganong, Rhodora, xxi. 171 (1919). 



