115 



A number of rare plants characteristic of the mountain flora 

 were seen on the cliffs along the river, but it is not the purpose 

 of this paper to enumerate them. On the way back to Fort 

 Payne I found Folygala nana again at a place where it was quite 

 abundant in dry woods, as on Sand Mountain the day before. 



On several flat sandstone outcrops away from the streams the 

 flora strongly resembled that of granite outcrops in Middle 

 Georgia and therefore to a lesser extent that of Altamaha Grit 

 outcrops in South Georgia. The commonest inhabitants of such 

 places, in approximate order of abundance, seemed to be as fol- 

 lows : Crotonopsis linearis Michx., Sarothra gentianoides L., Diodia 

 teres Walt., Stenophyllns capillaris (L.) Britton, Dianiorpha pusilla 

 Nutt., Arcnaria brevifolia Nutt., Cypcnis infiexns Muhl. (new to 

 Alabama), TricJiostenia lineare Nutt., and Polygonum temie Michx. 

 Chondrophora virgaia, which associates with about half of these 

 species in the Altamaha Grit region, seemed to be entirely absent 

 here, being in the mountains apparently confined to the immedi- 

 ate vicinity of streams. 



In the dry and damp woods which cover most of the plateaus 

 above mentioned probably as many as nine tenths of the species 

 which I was able to recognize are common to the coastal plain, 

 though most of them are quite widely distributed through the in- 

 tervening territory. The analogies between these plateaus and 

 some parts of the coastal plain, especially the Altamaha Grit 

 region, are numerous and striking, but I will not attempt to dis- 

 cuss them at this time. 



Soon after leaving Lookout Mountain I spent about 24 hours 

 in Limestone County, the middle one of the three Alabama 

 counties which lie wholly north of the Tennessee River. The 

 strata here are Lower Carboniferous, but there are very few out- 

 crops of rock, and the whole aspect of the country, or as much 

 of it as I saw, is strikingly Hke that of some parts of the Eocene 

 region of the coastal plain. 



Oaks of various kinds abound in Limestone County, but im- 

 mediately north of Athens, the county-seat, Pinns Taeda seems 

 to be the prevailing tree, though this is very near the limit of its 

 known range in that direction, and pines of every kind seem to 



