342 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1889. 



have been regarded as the chief elements in producing the results. 

 That admirable botanist and energetic collector, Dr. C C. Parry, 

 in a paper on the Rocky mountain alpine region, published in the 

 "Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science " for 1869, p. 249, remarks that the most satisfactory ex- 

 planation is that the so called timber line marks the extreme point 

 of minimuvi temperature below which no exposed phenogamous 

 plant can exist. All that survives above this point does so by 

 submitting to a winter burial of snow, beneath which protecting 

 cover it is enabled to maintain its torpid, existence. 



The great objection which this purely meteorological view pre- 

 sented to Mr. Meehan's mind was that the dwarfed and gnarled 

 coniferae extending so many hundred feet up the mountain sides, 

 never produced seed, and we are reduced to the alternative of 

 believing either that the seeds have been carried up the mountain 

 sides in enormous quantities and to enormous distances from the 

 fruitive trees below by winds, or else that there were seed bearing 

 progenitors of these scrubby pines, beneath the tall protecting 

 branches of which they had their earliest stages of growth. He 

 was satisfied from subsequent observations in the mountains of 

 North Carolina, and in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, 

 that this last view is the correct one, — that large timber trees at 

 no very remote period extended much further up the mountain 

 sides than thej^ do now, and that they have since disappeared for 

 reasons presently to be stated, leaving only the 3'ounger trees to 

 struggle on as best they may. 



Roan Mountain in North Carolina is about 6300 feet above the 

 level of the sea. Timber extends to its summit on some parts of 

 it, while in other parts it is destitute of timber for many hundreds 

 of feet down its sides. The species on the summit is Abies 

 Frazeri, and Abies nigra. Oak and other trees come occasionally 

 to near the top and at about 6000 feet he measured a black oak — 

 Quercus tinctoria, that was 5 feet in circumference at 3 feet from 

 the ground, and was perhaps 40 feet high. The places destittite 

 of trees were the steep declivities, — while those on which the 

 trees were growing were of a more level character. Further down 

 the mountain sides the steep inclines would be clothed with forest 

 growth, as well as those of a more gradual ascent. It is of the 

 summit only that the differences in inclination, presented different 

 forest aspects. But in the spaces clear of" Balsam "' as the Abies 

 Frazeri is popularlj^ known, an occasional one of good size would 

 be seen. In the close Balsam woods, both on the summit and 

 lower down the mountain sides, crops of young plants would be 

 found under the mature trees, but, what was very remarkable, 

 there had evidently been no young trees started till the parents 

 were near maturity. A large area with trees 30 or 40 feet 

 high would have an undergrowth of young ones a foot or so high, 

 while other areas of younger trees, would have innumerable small 

 seedlings growing among the damp moss beneath them, and it 



