114 BOTANICAL EXCURSION 
probably the most showy species of the genus. Its brilliant 
golden flowers evince a disposition to become double, even in 
the wild state, and we often found as many as eight or nine 
petals. This tendency would doubtless be fully developed 
by cultivation. Around the base of these mountains we saW 
Blephilia nepetoides, and another labiate plant not yet in 
flower, which we took for Pycnanthemum montanum (Mi- 
chauas). 
The next day (July 9th) we ascended the Grandfather, 
the highest as well as the most rugged and savage mountain i 
we had yet attempted, although by no means the most ele- 4l. 
vated in North Carolina, as has generally been supposed — 
It is a sharp and craggy ridge, lying within Ashe and Burke | 
counties, very near the north-east corner of Yancey, and cut- € j 
ting across the chain to which it belongs (the Blue Ridge), — 
nearly at right angles. It is entirely covered with trees, €x- — 
cept where the rocks are absolutely perpendicular; and to- r4 
wards the summit, the Balsam Fir of these mountains, Abies 
balsamifera, partly, of Michaux's Flora (but not of the younger | 
Michaux’s Sylva) the A. Fraseri (Pursh), prevails, accom- 
panied by the Abies nigra or Black Spruce. The earth, — | 
rocks, and prostrate decaying trunks, in the shade of these — 
trees, are carpeted with mosses and lichens; the whole pre a 
senting the most perfect resemblance to the dark and sombre —— 1 
forests of the northern parts of New York and Vermont; 
except that the trees are here much smaller. This simi- 
of the extreme Northern States and Canada.t Indeed the 
* According to Professor Mitchell’s barometrical measurements, the : 
ic attains the altitude of 5,556 feet above the sea; the Rot» 
iius feet ; and the loftiest peak of the Black Mountain, 6,476 feet; th? 
atter thus exceeds Mount Washington in New Hampshire (hitherto &¢- 
counted the highest mountain in the United States) by more than two E 
hundred feet.—See American Journal of Science and Arts, vol, xxxv, p. 377 
T Among those northern species which we had not previously obser 
