54 ESSAYS. 
with a considerable number of peculiar species intermixed. 
Under the guidance of Mr. Levi Moody we followed the Wa- 
tauga, here a mere creek, for four or five miles along the base 
of the Grandfather, until we reached a ridge which promised 
a comparatively easy ascent. In the rich soil of this ridge, at 
an elevation of about four hundred feet above the Watauga, 
we found one of the plants which of all others we were de- 
sirous of obtaining, namely, Carex Fraseriana. Mr. Curtis 
had made diligent but ineffectual search for this most singu- 
lar and rarest of Carices, “ along the Catawba near Morgan- 
ton,” and “near Table Mountain,” where Fraser is said to 
have discovered it; and we believe that no subsequent bota- 
nist has ever met with it, except Mr. Kin, whose specimen in 
Muhlenberg’s herbarium is merely ticketed “ Deigher walli in 
der Wilternus.” Muhlenberg assigns the habitat, “ Tiger Val- 
ley, Pennsylvania;” but Kin probably obtained bis plant in 
Tygart’s Valley, Virginia, a secluded vale among the western 
ranges of the Alleghanies (in Randolph County), not far from 
Greenbrier Mountains, and other localities visited by this col- 
lector, as his tickets prove. Kin cultivated the plant for some 
time at Philadelphia, where it was seen by several botanists, 
and among them by Pursh, who took it for the Mapania sylva- 
tica of Aublet; a mistake which he did not discover whilst 
writing his Flora in Europe, although he had the culti- 
vated Carex Fraseriana before him. We were too late for 
good specimens, but succeeded in obtaining a considerable 
number with the fruit still adherent. The plant grows in 
tufts, after the manner of C. plantaginea ; the evergreen 
leaves are a foot or more in length, and often an inch and a 
half in width, with singularly undulate margins ; the slender 
scapes are naked except towards the root, where they are 
sheathed by the convulate bases of the leaves. To the deserip- 
tion of the spike, fruit, etc., we have nothing of any conse- 
quence to add. 
in this region, we may mention Carer fleruosa, C. plantaginea, C. scabrata, 
C. intumescens, Oxalis Acetosella, Streptopus roseus, Viburnum lantanoides, 
and Platanthera orbiculata in the finest condition, and in greater profusion 
than we ever before met with this, the most striking of North American 
Orchidaceae. 
