From the White Mountains, on the eastern borders of New 

 Hampshire, a mountain system traverses the State of Maine in a 

 northeastern direction terminating in Mars Hill on the eastern 

 boundaries of Aroostook county near the St. John's river. This 

 system, presumably archean in age, has many notable interrup- 

 tions and is represented now and then merely by widely distant 

 hills and low peaks. From its southwest extremity in the 

 White Mountains, of which Mount Washington (6,300 feet) is 

 the highest peak, the elevation decreases toward the Kennebec 

 river where the first appreciable break in the system occurs. Here 

 the range gives way to an extensive stretch of low hills and broad 

 swells reaching nearly to the eastern border of the State. From 

 out this plain occasional high peaks arise, such as Mount Kineo 

 on the eastern margin of Moosehead lake. In Piscataquis 

 county the range assumes again a mountain character in Mt. 

 Spencer and, increasing higher and higher toward the northeast, 

 has its grand culmination in that majestic peak, Ktaadn. Again 

 decreasing in elevation, the range continues its northeastern 

 direction ; Chase mountain in Piscataquis and Mar's Hill in 

 Aroostook being the only two remaining peaks of prominence. 



Ktaadn is a lonely mountain, rising with its foothills from an 

 almost level plain which extends unbroken for miles to the south, 

 west and north. Rising thus, in such a bold, abrupt manner, to 

 an altitude of 5,216 feet above sea level and being the highest and 

 most northerly peak 1 of any consequence in this northeast exten- 

 sion of the Appalachian chain, it is obviously exposed to all pos- 

 sible climatic vicissitudes and naturally becomes the most ideal 



1. Mt. Ktaadn lies 161 miles to the northeast of Mt. Washington in Lat. 45, 03', 

 40", thus being 1, 37', 15", approximately 112 miles, farther north. 



place in the State for the study of alpine conditions, climatic 

 influences, timber lines, ecological adaptions to alpine conditions, 

 and the dynamics of mountain societies. 



Though Ktaadn has been the goal of several botanical expedi- 

 tions, extending over a period of some sixty-six years, 1 the flora 



1. The first botanical records are those made by Prof. J. W. Bailey in the Am. 

 Jour. Sci. 32: 20-34. 1837. The mountain was described as early as 1804 by Ghas. 

 Turner, Jr., of Boston. "His account is preserved in the collections of the Mass. 

 Hist. Society." , 



has been treated wholly from the taxonomic and floristic aspect. 



