LAWSON OCCURRENCE OF HEATHER IN CAPE BRETON. 33 



Encyclopfedia, records it as a native of Greenland. No mention of 

 it is made by Dr. Lang, in his enumeration of the known plants 

 of Greenland, appended to Rink's Geographical and Statistical ac- 

 count of Greenland, published in 185T, — from Avhich we may infer 

 that the plant is perhaps as rare and local in Greenland as in New- 

 foundland, or even in Massachusetts ! " In the American Journal 

 of Science for September, 1861, Professor Gray announced the un- 

 expected discovery, by Mr. Jackson Dawson, of a patch of heath 

 in Tewksbury, Massachusetts; adding the remark, that: "It may 

 have been introduced, unlikely as it seems ; or we may have to 

 rank this heath with Scolopendrium oficinarum, Suhularia aquatica, 

 and Marsilea quadrifolia, as species of the Old World so sparingly 

 represented in the New, that they are known only at single sta- 

 tions, — perhaps late-lingerers rather than new-comers." Mr. 

 Sand, after exploring the locality, gave a detailed account of the 

 case, and of the probabilities that the plant might be truly native. 

 Professor Gray adding a note to say that the probability very much 

 depended upon the confirmation of the Newfoundland habitat. As 

 to that. Dr. Gray had been verbally informed, in January 1839, by 

 the late David Don, that he possessed specimens of Callmia col- 

 lected in Newfoundland by an explorer of that Island. The 

 Tewksbury habitat was fully described to me and interesting details 

 afforded by Professor Hitchcock, junr., with whom I was a fellow- 

 passenger through Massachusetts in November of last year. Mr. 

 C J. Sprague took up the subject, and after searching in vain for 

 any publication of Pylaie's containing mention of this heath in 

 Newfoundland, and finding that no specimen was extant in Pylaie's 

 herbarium, or elsewhere that he could trace, he took a sceptical 

 view, and in the Proceedings of the Boston Natural History So- 

 ciety for February and for May, 1862, he argued plausibly from 

 negative evidence, against the idea that any native heath had ever 

 been found in Newfoundland or on the American Continent. 

 However, in the Natural History Review for April, 1864, Mr. 

 Hewett C. Watson supplied the following additional evidence of 

 the existence of Calluna in Newfoundland : — 



" Specimens of Calluna vulgaris from Newfoundland have very recently 

 come into my hands under circumstances which seem to warrant its reception 

 henceforth as a true native of that Island. At the late sale of the Linnsean 



