VEGETATION OF BALD KNOB, ALA. 265 



move the lichens from trees, cultivated or in forests, for the 

 sake of saving the trees from injury. 



We have considered briefly the uses of lichens, and it is evident 

 enough that these plants are of some economic importance. Aside 

 from direct interest in economic problems, it is hoped that this 

 brief presentation may add somewhat to the more important as- 

 pects of lichenology, viz., taxonomic, morphological, ecological 

 and physiological. An excellent statement regarding the uses of 

 lichens may be found in Lindsay's " Popular History of British 

 Lichens," and the briefer statement in Schneider's " Guide to the 

 Study of Lichens " is also very in^-eresting and instructive. 



THE VEGETATION OF BALD KNOB, ELMORE 

 COUNTY, ALABAMA. 



By Roland M. Harper, 

 Geological Survey of Alabama. 



Wetumpka, the county-seat of Elmore County, Alabama, is 

 situated on both sides of the Coosa River, just at the fall-line 

 (inland boundary of the coastal plain), and about 200 feet above 

 sea-level. The river crosses the fall-line at such a small ansrle 

 that it is almost tangent to it in going through Wetumpka, and 

 the old part of the town, on the east side of the river, is in the 

 crystalline or metamorphic region, while the newer part across 

 the river is in the coastal plain, the demarcation between the 

 two physiographic provinces being very sharp at this point. 

 For several miles west of Wetumpka the country is quite flat, 

 as in many other parts of the coastal plain, but immediately 

 east of the town a steep hill of quartzite and gneiss, known 

 as Bald Knob, rises rather abruptly to a height of some 300 

 feet above the river.* The highest summits of this hill are 

 thickly strewn with angular fragments of cjuartz, with the up- 



* These topographic features are plainly shown on the U. S. Geological 

 Survey's topographic map of the Wetumpka (erroneously spelled We- 

 tumka) quadrangle, published in 1903. 



