168 LAWSON NOTES ON SOME NOVA SCOTIAN PLANTS. 



materials for the development of a system of Geographical Botany. 

 In this parcel Mr. Watson found amongst other plants, a specimen 

 of Calluna vulgaris, and called attention to the fact in the Scien- 

 tific Journals. 



There was likewise a vague tradition in Nova Scotia, that the 

 calluna had been found within our borders, but as we have two 

 plants, Corema Conradi, and Empetrum nigrum, that might 

 easily be mistaken for it, botanists did not pay much attention to 

 the rumour. However, in August, 1864, whilst travelling through 

 the island of Cape Breton, I heard at North Sydney that Mr. 

 Robertson, a farmer at St. Ann's, had found the Heather on his 

 farm, and that as he had come from Mexico to Cape Breton, it was 

 very unlikely that he could have brought the plant with him. I 

 visited St. Ann's, saw the Heather growing in small quantity in a 

 wet spot among native spruce trees, and on my return showed 

 specimens to the Institute. This seemed to settle the question, 

 every one believed that the Heather was a native American plant, 

 and the small quantity found seemed to favour the view of Professor 

 Gray, that these patches were the mere remnants of what had at 

 one time been a more abundant and more widely diffused plant on 

 the American Continent, that in fact the calluna was becoming 

 extinct on this side of the Atlantic. The St. Ann's specimens 

 which I sent to England were regarded as slightly different from 

 the European plant, and the late Dr. Seeman, editor of the Journal 

 of Botany, gave the new name Culluna Ailantica, to distinguish 

 the American form. 



Several other stations became known. In the first place, Mr. 

 Murray, the Provincial Geologist, found the plant growing in New- 

 foundland, thus silencing the doubts that had been expressed in 

 regard to Cormack's specimen. Then a lady in Halifax produced 

 a specimen which she had gathered some years before, somewhere 

 on the Dartmouth hills ; and another lady searched and found where 

 it had been gathered, and brought a fresh specimen, with the infor- 

 mation that there was only one plant. It subsequently became 

 known that there were several patches of Heather at a particular 

 spot in Point Pleasant Park, and, although too much of it has 



