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Appalachian Trail this summer, I found another stand of the 

 Bunchberry Cornus canadensis which appears to be the far- 

 thest south in this latitude. I have previously reported it on 

 Schunemunk Moutain in Orange County N.Y. at 1600 feet 

 and in a swamp farther north on Kittatiny Mountain at 1500 

 feet. This new location is in a swamp about 1400 feet above 

 sea at the head of a brook which plunges down the steep west 

 side of the mountain to enter the Delaware River near Poxono 

 Island, about eight miles above Water Gap. As in the other 

 stands it did not seem happy. It displayed few evidences of 

 blossoms, and no fruit whatever. Apparently it was maintain- 

 ing itself only by extension by stolons. These few stands, in 

 the southern New York and northern New Jersey highlands, 

 at elevations up to 1500 feet, where it seems to find conditions 

 somewhat approximating those farther north in the high Cat- 

 skills and in northern New England where it is common, are 

 presumably relicts of the colder conditions of earlier times in 

 the last post-glacial period. 



Another evident post-glacial relict which I found this sum- 

 mer with Forester Raymond Adolph of the Palisades Inter- 

 state Park, was a large and thriving colony of the Bearberry, 

 Arctostaphyllos uva-ursi, on an open ledgy hilltop north of Long 

 Pond, overlooking the Central Valley- West Point highway. 

 It covers half an acre and showed plentiful green fruit. This is 

 the fourth of such stands of this plant I have found in the 

 Orange County highlands, where it has been reported as rare; 

 two others being in the Harriman Park, on Black Mountain 

 and Fingerboard Mountain — both on the Appalachian Trail, 

 r.nd the other on Mombasha High Point, southwest of Mom- 

 lasha Lake, also on the Appalachian Trail. 



Evidence of the desperate efforts of plants at survival and 

 the advantage taken of the slightest encouragement, were, 

 seen in a badly burned area on the south end of Kittatiny 

 Mountain, west of Branchville, N. J. Several hundred acres 

 of the mountain top were burned over, during the August 

 drought, in a blaze exceedingly fierce for summer conditions, 

 but everything was so dry that the destruction was as bad as is 

 seen in spring or fall forest fire hazard periods. Even the thin 

 vegetable soil was reduced to black ashes; the trees and shrubs 

 were burned to death, and yet a few bits of green were to be 



