78 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 
NOTES ON THE FLORA OF THE NIAGARA PENINSULA 
AND SHORES OF LAKE ERIE. 
Read before the Hamilton Association, January 12th, 1893. 
BY JOHN MACOUN, M. A. 
To anyone not acquainted with the flora of Ontario in its 
eastera and northern parts, a visit to that part lying south and west 
of Hamilton would present so many points of contrast that the im- 
pression made would not be easily forgotton. Such has been the 
case with myself, and the vivid impressions made on my first visit 
with Dr. Cowdry in 1877 have been intensified by my subsequent 
ones. 
The grandeur of the forests south of Hamilton and east of the 
escarpment must have been very impressive to the early settlers, and 
to the botanist a source of wonder. Perhaps in no vart of America 
on the same number of square miles are there so many species of 
native trees as are found there to-day. It is zoo true that some of 
the more interesting are becoming very scarce and are almost un- 
known to the younger part of the community, yet their scarcity in 
the present is no proof of their rarity in the past. Owing to 
frequent changes in soil the rarer trees are very local and seem to 
be passing out of the remembrance of the present generation, in 
nearly all the localities where they have been. While at Niagara- 
on-the-Lake last summer I was desirous of getting a photograph of a 
well developed Sassafras, and if possible one of a group of the 
Cucumber-tree (Asimina triloba). 1 had seen poor specimens of 
the Sassafras at Grimsby and Jordan Station, but wanted better, so 
after long hunting and many talks I found a few on the outside near 
Four Mile Creek and a large one was discovered ina field still 
further to the north. Of the Cucumber-tree I could get no trace 
whatever. The preceding year I had looked for it where I found it in 
1877, at the foot of Queenston Heights, but the forest was cut away 
and the memory of its existence had passed from the people. By 
