54 SATl'RDAY LECTURES. 



greens have become dwarfed to shruljs,. three or four feet 

 high, so dense that you may often walk for rods upon their 

 tops. At 5,000 feet, onh^ a few creeping shrubs remain, and 

 for the remaining 1,200 feet we have only a ridge of barren 

 rocks, with liere and there a few grasses and sedges, and a 

 few heaths and mosses with the arctic sandwort, Arenoria 

 Groenlandica, keeping up the struggle for existence. 



Ascending Eoan mountain, at l^etween 3.000 and 4,000 

 feet of altitude, we pass through a belt of giant trees. One 

 chestnut measured 24 feet in circumference at five feet from 

 the ground ; one black cherry iPrunus serotina) measured 10 

 feet, and as straight as a pine, rose 70 feet without a lirnl), 

 while hundreds of chestnuts, sugar maples, lindens, and 

 tulip trees were seen from four to seven feet in diameter, 

 and 70 or 80 feet to the first limb. 



During the next 2,000 feet the deciduous trees gradually 

 disappear, till hemlocks, firs, and spruces alone remain. 



At length, emerging from the belt of evergreens surround- 

 ing, and in j^laces coming to the ver}"- summit, we come out 

 upon a grass}^ slope of 1,000 acres, the soil rich, black, and 

 a foot or two deep, largely composed of vegetable humus, 

 the grass of a most vivid green, and dotted here and there 

 with clumps of mountain alder, {Alnus viridis,) and moun- 

 tain laurel, {Rhododendron Cafcnvbiense,) the latter one of the 

 most beautiful shrubs that can be imas-ined, formino- svm- 

 metrical domes of dark pink, from 6 to 8 feet high. Add 

 to this large areas of mountain honeysuckle, (Rhododendron 

 calendulaceum,) with great masses of bloom, varying from 

 golden 3'ellow to deep crimson, so that the hillside seems a 

 flame of fire, and you can cease to wonder that Dr. Gray, 

 who first explored this mountain in 1841, pronounces it the 

 most beautiful of American mountains. 



These grassy summits or " balds," are a marked feature of 

 these southern Appalachians, giving a name to one long 

 range, and raise an interesting question as to what climatic 

 or other changes, have sufficed, first, to stimulate a forest 

 oTOwth of deciduous trees sufficient to account for such an 



