BOTANICAL EXCURSION TO NORTH CAROLINA. 53 
the toil of ascending this beetling cliff, where we also ob- 
tained the Geum (Sieversia) radiatum, probably the most 
showy species of the genus. The brilliant golden flowers 
have a disposition to double, even in the wild state, in which 
we often found as many as eight or nine petals. This ten- 
deney would doubtless be fully developed by cultivation. 
Around the base of these mountains we saw Blephilia nepe- 
toides, and another Labiate plant not yet in flower, which 
we took for Pycnanthemum montanum, Michx. 
The next day (July 9th) we ascended the Grandfather, the 
highest as well as the most rugged and savage mountain we 
had yet attempted; although by no means the most elevated 
in North Carolina, as has generally been supposed. It is a 
sharp and craggy ridge, lying within Ashe and Burke coun- 
ties, very near the northeast corner of Yancey, and cutting 
across the chain to which it belongs (the Blue Ridge) nearly 
at right angles. It is entirely covered with trees except where 
the rocks are absolutely perpendicular; and towards the sum- 
mit, the Balsam Fir of these mountains, Abies balsamifera, 
partly, of Michaux’s Flora (but not of the younger Mi- 
chaux’s Sylva), the <A. F’raseri, Pursh, prevails, accom- 
panied by the Abies nigra or Black Spruce. The earth, rocks, 
and prostrate decaying trunks, in the shade of these trees, are 
carpeted with mosses and lichens; and the whole present the 
most perfect resemblance to the dark and sombre forests of 
the northern parts of New York and Vermont, except that the 
trees are here much smaller. The resemblance extends to the 
whole vegetation; and a list of the shrubs and herbaceous 
plants of this mountain would be found to include a large 
portion of the common plants of the extreme northern States 
and Canada.? Indeed the vegetation is essentially Canadian, 
1 According to Professor Mitchel’s barometrical measurements, the 
Grandfather attains the altitude of five thousand five hundred and fifty- 
six feet above the level of the sea; the Roan, six thousand and thirty- 
eight feet ; and the highest peak of the Black Mountain, six thousand 
four hundred and seventy-six feet, which exceeds Mount Washington in 
New Hampshire (hitherto accounted the highest mountain in the United 
States) by more than two hundred feet. 
2 Among the northern species which we had not previously observed 
