446 ALPINE AND ARCTIC PLANTS 



gentle, so modest yet so adventurous, so wide in its migrations 

 yet so choice in the selection of the mossy nooks which it 

 adorns with its pendant bells, and renders fragrant with its 

 delicious perfume, without praying that we might, in these days 

 of petty distinctions and narrow views, be favoured with more 

 such minds as that of the great Swede, to combine the little 

 details of the knowledge of natural history into grand views of 

 the unity of nature. 



Another plant which, being less dependent on shade and 

 shelter than the Linncea, mounts still higher, is the cowberry 

 or foxberry ( Vaccinium vitis-Idcea). This, also, is both Euro- 

 pean and American, and is probably a survivor of the Pleis- 

 tocene period. It still occurs in at least one locality in the 

 low country of Massachusetts, and on the coast of Maine. It 

 is found along the granitic coast of Nova Scotia, and extends 

 thence northward to the Arctic circle, being found at Great 

 Bear Lake and at Unalaska. This, too, is a most unchanging 

 species, and the same statement may be made respecting the 

 cloudberry (Rubus Chamtemorus\ the black crowberry (Em- 

 petrum nigrum\ the Labrador tea (Ledum latifolium), the 

 three-toothed cinquefoil (Potentilla tridentata\ which grows 

 on the coast of Nova Scotia, and is found in the nodules of 

 the Ottawa clay, the same in every detail as on Mount Wash- 

 ington, the bog bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum\ and the 

 dwarf bilberry ( V. c&spitosuni). Several of these, too, it will be 

 observed, are berry-bearing plants, whose seeds must be de- 

 posited in all kinds of localities by birds. Yet they never 

 occur in the warm plains, nor do they show much tendency 

 to vary in the distant and somewhat dissimilar places in which 

 they occur. In the case of most of these species, the most 

 careful comparison of specimens from Mount Washington 

 with those from Labrador, shows no tittle of difference. When 

 we consider the vast length of time during which such species 

 have existed, and the multiplied vicissitudes through which 



