Wat N«gaius. 
\ a Gn eee JANUARY, 4899- Nowe 
COLLECTING IN THE GREAT SMOKIES. 
BY JAMES H. FERRISS. 
For three summers | have collected in the Great Smokies, prinet- 
pally upon Thunderhead and Mirey Ridge and in Cade’s Cove. 
Clingman’s Dome was skimmed over a couple of times and also the 
bluff of the Little Tennessee at Tallassee ford, and this year I gave 
three days to the Unaka range. This range is also on the line be- 
tween Tennessee and North Carolina. 
When a tenderfoot in shells, Mrs. M. L. Andrews, of Knoxville, sent 
me Vitrinizonites latissimus. I felt that if a woman could do as well 
as that, a map might find something as large as a tin cup, with spines. 
At the first opportunity the wonderful shell land was surveyed, and 
since then I have seen some of the most delightful days of my life’ 
These mountains are covered with a luxuriant growth of trees and 
plants of many varieties, fungi and shells. It is an enchanted land 
surely, for I am homesick until I return. 
This year, George H, Clapp, of Pittsburgh, a careful student, a tire- 
less collector, a regular cracker-jack, to speak professionally, aud my wife 
went with me. From Knoxville we go southward thirty-five miles iu 
a farm wagon. ‘There the road and telephone ends, and collectors are 
at home with William Blair in Cade’s Cove, as good a man as was ever 
made up to this time. Cade’s Cove, six miles in length, is thickly 
settled, but from this point one must ride a mule or walk. 
Mr. Clapp arrived in the Cove about noon a few days after I 
had completed a little hasty prospecting. Late in the afternoon we 
