564 report — 1884. 



marks the limit of glaciation, rarely passes the parallel of 40° or 39°. Nor 

 have any violent changes occurred here, as they have on the Pacific side 

 of the continent, within the period under question. So, while Europe 

 was suffering hardship, the lines of our Atlantic American flora were cast 

 in pleasant places, and the goodly heritage remains essentially un- 

 impaired. 



The transverse direction and the massiveness of the mountains of 

 Europe, while they have in part determined the comparative poverty of 

 its forest-vegetation, have preserved there a rich and widely distributed 

 Alpine flora. That of Atlantic North America is insignificant. It consists 

 of a few arctic plants, left scattered upon narrow and scattered mountain- 

 tops, or in cool ravines of moderate elevation ; the maximum altitude is 

 only about 6,000 feet in lat. 44°, on the White Mountains of New Hamp- 

 shire, where no winter snow outlasts midsummer. The best Alpine 

 stations are within easy reach of Montreal. But as almost every species 

 is common to Europe, and the mountains are not magnificent, they offer 

 no great attraction to a European botanist. 



Farther south, the Appalachian Mountains are higher, between lat. 

 36° and 34° rising considerably above 6,000 feet ; they have botanical 

 attractions of their own, but. they have no Alpine plants. A few sub- 

 Alpine species linger on the cool shores of Lake Superior, at a compara- 

 tively low level. Perhaps as many are found nearly at the level of the sea 

 on Anticosti, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, abnormally cooled by the 

 Labrador current. 



The chain of great fresh-water lakes, which are discharged by the 

 brimming St. Lawrence, seems to have little effect upon our botany, 

 beyond the bringing down of a few north-western species. But you may 

 note with interest that they harbour sundry maritime species, mementos 

 of the former saltuess of these interior seas. Cakile Americana, much 

 like the European sea rocket, Hudsonia tomentosa (a peculiar cistacious 

 genus imitating a heath), lathyrus maritimus, and ammophila arenaria 

 are the principal. Salicornia, glaux, scirpus maritimus, ranunculus 

 cymbalaria, and some others may be associated with them. But these 

 are widely diffused over the saline soil which characterises the plains 

 beyond our wooded region. 



I have thought that some general considerations like these might have 

 more interest for the biological section at large than any particular indi- 

 cations of our most interesting plants, and of how and where the botanist 

 might find them. Those who in these busy days can find time to herborise 

 will be in the excellent hands of the Canadian botanists. At Philadel- 

 phia their brethren of ' the States ' will be assembled to meet their 

 visitors, and the Philadelphians will escort them to their classic ground, 

 the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. To have an idea of this peculiar phy- 

 togeographical district, you may suppose a long wedge of the Carolina coast 

 to be thrust up northward quite to New York harbour, bringing into a 

 comparatively cool climate many of the interesting low-country plants of 

 the South, which, at this season, you would not care to seek in their 

 sultry proper home. Years ago, when Pnrsh and Leconte and Torrey 

 used to visit it, and in my own younger days, it was wholly primitive 

 and unspoiled. Now, when the shore is lined with huge summer hotels, 

 the pitch pines carried off for firewood, the bogs converted into cranberry- 

 grounds, and much of the light sandy or gravelly soil planted with vine- 

 yards or converted into melon and sweet-potato patches, I fear it may 



