34 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
everything is on a grand scale. The region surround- 
ing Lake Nipigon is included in the Nipigon Forest 
Reserve, about the size of the State of New Jersey, and 
the lake itself, forming as it does the uppermost one of 
the series of large Laurentian Lakes, ought to be called 
one of the Six Great Lakes. It is about forty-five by 
seventy-five miles in length and breadth, has many 
islands of all sizes and mainly very rocky in character, 
and the shores are steep and very irregular. The Lake 
Nipigon region has been covered in the far past by a 
flow of diabase (Keewenawan), which has formed a 
very rough topography, with mountains and gorges and 
everywhere cliffs three or four hundred feet high exhib- 
iting palisade structure. This whole region is densely 
wooded, being an unbroken wilderness of bog and 
terrace, cliff and valley, the new railway lines affording 
the only land trails. At the extreme north end of Lake 
Nipigon the granite underlying the diabase comes to 
the surface and forms a more gently rolling, glaciated 
surface, in places extensively burned over. In_ this 
more northern region, however, were seen some of the 
best examples of a pure Picea-Sphagnum muskeag found 
unywhere during the three years. 
The climate of the Lake Nipigon region is one of great 
extremes, occasional July and August temperatures 
reaching 90° F., while during the winter temperatures 
of between fifty and sixty below zero are not infrequent. 
There is practically no month of the year free from frost 
and the temperature of the surface six inches of Lake 
Nipigon in late August was found to be 59°. There is 
usually not much snow until late in the fall and the 
total for the year is probably not more than two feet. 
Potatoes will usually mature a fair crop in sheltered 
spots although usually more or less damaged by oc- 
casional nips of frost. 
Around Graham, two hundred miles fb aeet of 
ary consider- 
Fort t William, ‘the geological formations v. 
“a 
