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TORREYA 



Vol. 27 No. 1 



January-February, 1927 



A SIX-HOUR (ROSS-SECTION OF THE VEGETATION 

 OF SOUTHERN ONTARIO 



Roland M. IlAurKK 



To travel over 200 miles through a foreign country and return 

 to the United States the same day without any formalities at 

 the border is an experience that many people have every day, 

 but few if any have thought it worth while to publish an account 

 of what they saw on such a trip, and there is apparently no 

 record of such observations in recent botanical literature. On 

 October 1 1, 1925, the writer had such an opportunity of traveling 

 through Canada, in going from Detroit to Buffalo by the Mich- 

 igan Central R. R. (Canada Southern division), and took full 

 advantage of it by making notes all the way. 



When I entered the train at Detroit a Canadian official asked 

 my destination, and when told it was Buffalo no proof was de- 

 manded and no further questions were asked. A little later the 

 conductor took my ticket and gave me a red hat-check, which 

 signified to the United States customs and immigration in- 

 spectors at Niagara Falls, and any one else who might be inter- 

 ested, that I was a through passenger. Any one taking notes 

 from a train on that route seven or eight years before might 

 have been regarded with suspicion (as sometimes happened in 

 this country at that time), but my activities in that line attracted 

 no attention, apparently. 



The Michigan Central R. R. crosses the Detroit River in a 

 tunnel about two miles long, and the Niagara River on a high 

 bridge about two miles below the falls. The route lies at an 

 average distance of about ten miles from Lake Erie, nowhere 

 within sight of the lake. The distance between the two crossings 

 of the international boundary Is about 225 miles, and the journey 

 was made between 9:25 a. m. and 3:25 p. m., 75lh meridian time. 

 As the train stopped half an hour for dinner at St. Thomas, and 



