86 Dr, Dawson on the Flora 



ington and Mount Munro, and on which are the dark ponds or 

 tarns known as the Lakes of the Clouds, forming the sources of 

 the Amonoosook river, which flows in the opposite direction. 

 From this plateau many alpine plants stretch downward into 

 the ravine, while lowland plants availing themselves of the 

 shelter and moisture of this cul-de-sac, climb boldly upward 

 almost to the higher plateau. Other species again occur here 

 which are found neither on the exposed alpine summits and 

 ridges nor in the low country. Conspicuous among the hardy 

 climbers are two coarse and poisonous weeds of the river valleys, 

 that look like intruders into the company of the more dwarfish 

 alpine plants ; — the cow-parsnip {Heracleum lanatum) and the 

 white hellebore ( Veratrum viride). Both of these plants were seen 

 struggling up through the ground at the margin of the snow, 

 and climbing up moist hollows almost to the top of the preci- 

 pices. Some specimens of the latter were crowded with the in- 

 fant caterpilars of a mountain butterfly or moth. Less conspicuous, 

 and better suited to the surrounding vegetation, were the bluets 

 ( Oldenlandia coerulea)^ now in blossom here as they had been 

 months before in the low country, the dwarf cornel ( Cornus Can- 

 adensis)^ and the twin-flower {Linncea borealis), the latter 

 reaching quite to the plateau of the Lake of the Clouds, and en- 

 tering into undisputed companionship with the truly alpine plants, 

 though it is also found at Gorham four thousand feet lower. 



Of the plants which seemed to be confined or nearly so to the 

 upper part of the ravine, one of the most interesting was the 

 northern painted cup, {Castelleia septentrionalis) a plant which 

 abounds on the coast of Labrador and extends thence through all 

 Arctic North America to the Rocky Mountains, and is perhaps 

 identical with the C Sibirica of Northern Asia and the C. pallida 

 of Northern Europe. Large beds of it were covered with their pale 

 yellow blossoms on the precipitous banks overhanging the head of 

 the ravine. With the painted cup and here alone, was another 

 beautiful species of a very difierent order, the northern green 

 orchis, (^Platanthera hyperhorea) a plant which occurs, though 

 rarely, in Canada, but is more abundant to the northward. Here 

 also occurred. Peck's geum, {G. radiatum, var.), Arnica mollis^ 

 and several other interesting plants. 



Of the Alpine plants which descend into the ravine, the most 

 interesting was the Greenland sandwort, (Arenaria [Alsine) 

 Groenlandica) which was blooming abundantly, with its clusters 



