1921] Fernald,— Expedition to Nova Scotia 91 



specimens to represent Nova Scotia; and when a prominent pres.ent- 

 day Nova Scotian botanist, asked about some critical species he is 

 supposed to have discovered, replies that his only available evidence 

 is a marginal memorandum in the Manual, it seems time that we 

 learn what actually grows in the Province. Furthermore, in spite 

 of the rather extreme generalization of Professor Sommers, that 

 " The subarctic character of our [Nova Scotian] flora will be observed 

 from a study of our list" and the fact that the list has less than forty 

 subarctic species and that this and other lists indicate a prevailingly 

 Canadian and Alleghenian flora with forests of spruce, larch, fir, 

 white pine, red pine, canoe birch, white ash, sugar maple, American 

 elm, beech, red oak and hop hornbeam, we had a few indications of 

 the presence in Nova Scotia of southern coastal plain plants, — just 

 enough to stimulate the imagination. 



The best known example of the very few characteristic coastal 

 plain plants which we knew to be in Nova Scotia is Schizaea pusilla, 

 the famous Curly Grass of the New Jersey pine barrens and of the 

 Newfoundland barrens, an isolated representative in eastern North 

 America of a large genus of the tropics and the southern hemisphere. 

 Between the pine barrens of New Jersey and Nova Scotia Schizaea 

 is quite unknown, although repeatedly sought on Long Island, 

 Nantucket and Cape Cod, and in peninsular Nova Scotia its occur- 

 rence has rested solely upon a single colony discovered in July, 1879, 

 by Mrs. Britton, 1 whose station was very limited for, as she has 

 reported, she "collected . . . nearly all there were" and "Prof. 

 Mackay, of Nova Scotia, has since searched in the locality where I 

 found it, but in vain." 1 Subsequently Schizaea has been found on 

 the barrens of Cape Breton by Nichols, but not on the mainland of 

 Nova Scotia. 



Another coastal plain plant, the Inkberry, Ilex glabra, was in 

 Lindsay 'a Catalogue, on the authority of Sommers, as found at Hali- 

 fax; but, with no specimens known from east of Massachusetts, the 

 record seemed too doubtful and the species was excluded by Macoun 

 in 1883 from Part 1 of his Catalogue of Canadian Plants. In 1886, 

 however, Macoun reinstated it, for in the meantime he had himself 

 collected it near Halifax and received material from Shelburne. 



'E. G. Knight, as reported in Bull. Torr. Bot. Club, vii. 1 (1880); Gray, Bot. 

 Gaz. v. 4 (1880). 



2 E. G. Britton, Linn. Fern Bull. iv. 18 (1896). 



