188 THE PLANT WORLD 



THE KNUBBLE— ADVICE TO BEGINNERS IN BOTANY. 



By Walter Deane. 



AS I turn over the botanical sheets of mounted plants in my her- 

 barium, I frequently come across one labelled "The Knubble, 

 Shelburne, New Hampshire." Wliat a flood of delightful recol- 

 lections that word Knubble brings with it, for it was on that very spot 

 that years ago I began my botanical experience. 



In the broad valley of the Androscoggin River, in eastern New 

 Hampshire, there rises abruptly from a bright, green meadow, a wooded 

 mound some thirty feet high. It is about two hundred feet in length 

 and one hundred in breadth, and is intimately associated in my mind 

 with my visits to Shelburne in the early eighties, and the hapjjy days 

 that passed so quickly among the plants that clothed its sides and top. 

 I was filled with the keen enthusiasm of a beginner, and many of my 

 first discoveries were made on this Knubble, as it was always called. 

 It lay but a few minutes' walk from the house across the field, and the 

 river flowed swiftly by its foot. It was my Mecca. Mount Moriah 

 towered across the sparkling waters to the south, while to the north- 

 west Bald Cap frowned with its beetling cliffs. The accompanying 

 illustration was taken by a friend of mine in April, 1898, before the 

 snow had entireh^ left the ground. The view is looking south. The 

 eastern spur of Moriah is seen to the right, and the river, not visible in 

 the picture, flows in an easierly direction through the intervale just be- 

 hind the Knubble. The view of Mount Moriah* was taken later in the 

 season of the same year. The heavily wooded foothill is Mount Olivet. 

 On the right of the picture is seen the south bank of the river, which 

 cuts through the plain. 



The beaked hazel nut (Corylus rosbxita) fringed the borders of the 

 Knubble, and I eagerly watched the lengthening beaks as the summer 

 advanced. A plunge through the hazel and a short scramble up the 

 slope gave me a most interesting find. Springing up through the soft 

 moss was the little mountain cranberry ( Vaccinmm Vitis-Idaea). It 

 was on July the second, and the plant was still in flower, and a mounted 

 sheet of it is still in flower near me in my herbarium. Parts of the 

 Knubble were carpeted with it, in company with the bunch berry ( Cor- 

 nus Canadensis) that beautiful little white flowered plant that clothes 

 our northern forests. Its bright red berries are most attractive in the 

 autumn. I well remember how surprised I was to find that the white 

 involucre was not the corolla and did not belong to the flower at all. 

 Surely I thought that botanists had a strange way of referring the con- 



* The two photographs were taken by Professor James B. Greenough, of Cam- 

 bridge, Massachusetts, and kindly loaned to me for this paper. 



