D 



ecember, 



1918] 



The Ottawa Naturalist 



109 



The distance between these two points is 10 miles 

 and the difference in elevation is 425 feet. The 

 railway would have obtained a route over the high- 

 land without this heavy grade by following up the 

 Madawaska river from Arnprior, but it was more 

 desirable to divert the line into the Bonnechere valley 

 so as to secure the business of the towns and villages 

 located there. 



Although the ridges and valleys in the Laurentian 

 highland taken in detail or in small groups appear 



to have no definite arrangement or trend, yet it is 

 clear that the main drainage streams are flowing 

 in a valley or series of valleys in echelon, having a 

 general northwest-southwest direction. 



Railway lines have no difficulty when proceeding 

 in these directions but the nature of the surface as 

 indicated above is unfavorable to lines which depart 

 from the trend of these controlling features. 



(To he continued.) 



RANDOM BOTANICAL NOTES. 

 11. L'IsLET County, Quebec. 



By Bro. M. Victorin, Longueuil College, Que. 



While engaged in studies preliminary to the build- 

 ing up of a detailed flora of Quebec, the writer felt 

 very keenly the lack of information concerning the 

 limit reached along the St. Lawrence river by a 

 number of boreal and halophytic types. 



He then proposed and it was his good fortune to 

 realize a collecting trip to L'Islet, a small riverside 

 town situated about fifty miles below Quebec city, 

 and fifty miles above Riviere-du-Lcup. Both 

 Quebec and Riviere-du-Loup having been repeat- 

 edly visited by trained botanists, it was thought that 

 a visit of a few days half-way between these two 

 places would furnish valuable data on that S2mi- 

 halophytic section of the St. Lawrence river. Con- 

 sequently, the last week of August, 1916, was de- 

 voted to botanizing in the region. 



The district consists of a narrow plain bordering 

 the St. Lawrence river and limited on the southeast 

 by a central highland which slopes gradually into 

 the valley of the St. John river. The highland which 

 has an average elevation of about 1000 feet above 

 sea-level, is sharply separated from the plain by a 

 prominent fault escarpment. The rocks are mainly 

 red and green shales, black shists interbedded with 

 quartzites, the assemblage of these being now known 

 to geologists as the Islet formation.* Furthermore, 

 the peculiar quartzites and conglomerates known as 

 the Kamouraska formation are also represented by 

 a few detached hills standing prominently over the 

 country. 



Botanically, it was found that the shore line and the 

 occasional protruding Cambrian rocks thereon were 

 unusually interesting, but in the interior of the 

 country, on account of its being thickly settled at a 

 very early period, little of interest was noted. 



.Varntinent 

 V^&!rvev. 



esser, .J. A., Reconnai.ssance along the Trans- 

 tinental Railway in Soutliern Quebec. Geological 

 ^ijrvey. Memoir Xo. 35. 



The waters of the St. Lawrence river are still 

 practically fresh at L'Islet. Off shore, however, the 

 sodium chloride is noticeable at high tide. I have 

 heard it said that water drawn from the river does 

 not freeze easily in winter and is worthless for 

 skating rinks, these facts pointing to the presence of 

 a small percentage of sodium chloride. 



The beach flora as it could be observed at this 

 late season was composed in the main of nearly pure 

 strands of Scirpus americanus Vahl., and Zizania 

 aquaiica L., the former being especially important 

 there as a turf-forming species. Among other 

 hydrophytes of interest were noted the following: 



Scirpus pauciflorus Lightf., 



Phragmiles communis L., 



Juncus Dudleyi Wiegand, 



Juncus nodosus L., 



Juncus bufonius L., 



Triglochim palustre L., 



Potamogelon bupleuroides Fernald., 



Poiamogeton epihydrus Raf., 



Heleranthera duhia (Jack.) MacM., 



Iris versicolor L. 

 Iris versicolor as it occurs on the shores of 

 L'Islet, Trois-Saumons and Saint-Jean-Port-Joli is 

 a rather perplexing plant seeming to verge toward 

 the American form of the boreal and coastal Iris 

 setosa L. In these localities the range of both 

 species may overlap and the hypothesis of hybridism 

 naturally presents itself to the mind. However, Dr. 

 M. L. Fernald tells us he has observed similar forms 

 of Iris versicolor far from the range of Iris setosa. 



As far as our observation goes the only halophytes 

 to reach so far up the St. Lawrence river are the 

 following: 



Liguslicum scoihicum L. 



Ranunculus Cymbalaria (Pursh.) Greene, 



Solidago sempervirens L. 



^>y/ 



