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from Pike’s Peak, down to the plains, there are numerous deep 
dark cafions, whose vegetation was very different from that of the 
plains or the mountains proper. The cafon flora, however, has 
been greatly modified by forest fires, causing the opening up and 
drying out of the gorges, as in the case of South Cheyenne 
Cajion, and by the vandalism of tourists who have ruthlessly de- 
stroyed ferns, columbines, Calochortus, and other showy plants. 
The flora of elevations from 10,000 to 13,000 feet is scant and 
low on the open dry ridges and-summits; in the mountain mead- 
ows, grasses, sedges and clovers abound; the mountain swamps 
are overgrown with Porentilla fruticosa, but no sphagna were ob- - 
served. Prof. L. R. Jones remarked that Potentilla fruticosa took 
possession of old fields and pastures in Vermont, becoming a weed. 
Mr. E. J. Durand reported a new station for Lpipacizs viridi- 
flora ; this plant appeared with some ferns on a lawn in the village 
of Canandaigua, N. Y., which had been transplanted from some 
point in the vicinity. Judge Day remarked that attempts to culti- 
vate it at Buffalo had not succeeded. Mrs. Britton said that a 
similar experience had been had with Arisaema Dracontium on 
Staten Island, which came up in a fern bed, while no other 
station for the species is known on the island. 
Mr. Pollard, Assistant Curator of the U.S. National Museum, 
explained briefly the terms of transfer which has been effected of 
the National Herbarium from the control of the Department of 
Agriculture to that of the Smithsonian Institution. The work 1s 
now carried on by three assistant curators under the general 
supervision of Mr. Frederick V. Coville, Honorary Curator; and 
Congress has this year appropriated the sum of $10,000 for the 
care and maintenance of the herbarium. 
Mrs. Britton made the following remarks on the rediscovery 
of Schizaea pusilla in Newfoundland: The Rev. A. C. Waghorne 
has recently sent me two small tufts of this little fern which he 
collected last year about 70 miles from Bay of Islands, Newfound- 
land; “in bogs, borders of ponds, the quarry N. W. of the railway.” 
The specimens are small like those I collected in Nova Scotia, 
but they have an abundance of fertile fronds, which are quite 
. mature. It will be remembered that this is the fern that was 
found in the herbarium of De La Pylaie, from~Newfoundland, 
