Vegetation of Northern Cape Breton. 261 



• 

 ous forest formation, wherever these two groups come into 

 competition with one another, from the standpoint of ecological 

 plant geography it seems best, on the whole, to regard the vegeta- 

 tion of this transition region as constituting merely the northward 

 extension of the deciduous forest formation. 



As a glance at the map (Fig. i) will show. Cape Breton Island, 

 located northeast of the peninsula of Nova Scotia (lat. 45° 30'- 

 47° N. ; long. 60° i5'-6i° 30' E.), and separated from the main- 

 land only by the Gut of Canso, a narrow strait scarcely a mile 

 wide, is situated near the northern edge of the transition forest 

 region. In northern Cape Breton, owing chiefly to differences 

 in climate at different elevations, both the deciduous forest forma- 

 tion and the northeastern evergreen coniferous forest formation 

 are well represented : the former predominates from sea level up 

 to an altitude of about 700 feet; the latter prevails at higher 

 elevations. The approximate distribution in this region of these 

 two formations is mapped in Fig. 2. The vegetation of the Bar- 

 rens, which occupy the highest parts of the plateau, apparently 

 bears much the same relationship to the evergreen coniferous 

 forest formation on the one hand and the arctic tundra on the 

 other that the vegetation of the transition forest region bears to 

 the deciduous forest formation and the evergreen coniferous 

 forest formation respectively : it seems to represent a transition 

 between evergreen coniferous forest, as typically developed, and 

 tundra. For various reasons the barrens have been mapped as 

 distinct, but their vegetation is to be regarded merely as the 

 upward extension of the evergreen coniferous forest formation. 



II. PREVIOUS BOTANICAL INVESTIGATIONS, AND FIELD 

 WORK OF THE AUTHOR 



Aside from the work of Ganong ('91, '93, etc.) and Transeau 

 ('09), practically no investigations of a purely ecological nature 

 have been conducted in the Maritime Provinces of eastern 

 Canada (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). The present paper 

 aims to portray in a general way the ecological relations of the 

 vegetation in a portion of this area. 



So far as is known to the writer, only three other botanists — • 

 John Macoun ('83-02, '98), C B. Robinson ('03, '04, etc.), and 



