g6 Rhodora [June 



consistency, being still soft and muddy below the surface. There is 

 not enough earth at Willoughby for such a slide. 



There is no roadway at the base of Mt. Hor on the west side of 

 the lake. A highway was laid out and finished in 1856 on the east 

 side at the base of Mt. Willoughby and is now the post road from 

 West Burke to Westmore village at the outlet of the lake. This high- 

 way is certainly one of the most beautiful rural roads in New Eng- 

 land, and is fully as much of a flower garden as the base of the cliffs 

 above. 



The Lake is some five miles long, a mile or more wide at its north- 

 ern half and narrowing at its southern end in the notch between the 

 two mountains. Few water plants have been collected in this south 

 part, the precipitous walls of the notch extending apparently into 

 deep water. The northern end has a beach half a mile in length 

 and meadows extending to the water's edge : the prevailing northerly 

 winds tend to drift water plants towards the south end of the lake 

 and such plants have been thus gathered on the south lesser beach. 



No mention is made of Willoughby in Wm. Oakes' elaborate cata- 

 logue of Vermont Plants,^ nor have I heard that Oakes ever visited the 

 northeastern part of the state ; but in that catalogue Mr. Robbins is 

 named as having collected at Lake Memphremagog and at Browning- 

 ton, at which latter place in 1829 he obtained Senecio aureus, L., var. 

 lanceoiatiis, Oakes, as noted in " Some rare plants of New England."'^ 

 This is Senecio Rohbiiisii, Oakes, of the present list. 



Mr. Carey is also named as collecting plants at Lyndon and Sutton 

 on the south side of Willoughby and at Charleston on the north, and 

 all within a dozen miles of the Notch. This Mr. Carey is John Carey, 

 the friend and companion of Asa Gray on his North Carolina trip, who 

 lived at Bellows Falls, Vermont, in 1835 and 1836, and died at an 

 advanced age in England in 1879.^ How Mr. Carey could have col- 

 lected Boirychium simplex, Hitchcock, at this early date at "Sutton, 

 near the village, on the road leading to Burke," ■* and not visited the 

 Willoughby Cliffs, however inaccessible they appeared, is to me a 

 mystery. 



1 Oakes in Thompson, Nat. Hist. Vt. (1S42) 173-20S, reprint 1-36. 



2 Oakes, Hovey's Mag. Hort. vii. (1841) 183. 



=* Vide Asa Gray, Biographical notice. Am. Jour. Sci., Ser. 3, xix. (1880) 422. 

 * Oakes, Cat. Vt. PI. 1. c. 207 (35). 



