LAWSON NOTES ON SOME NOVA SCOTIAN PLANTS. 169 



already been taken away by inconsiderate persons, yet it still exists 

 there. Numerous explanations have been offered as to how the 

 Heather got there, most persons assuming apparently that it could 

 not be indigenous. One suggestion was that the Highland soldiers 

 encamped there some thirty or forty years ago, used heather brooms 

 for sweeping out their camps, and that the seeds had dropped from 

 the brooms, and given rise to the heather patches. 



However, a careful examination of the locality by Mr. Jack 

 and myself, led to the conclusion that the Point Pleasant heather 

 was not only not indigenous, but had apparently been intentionally 

 planted, in fact that the place had been a garden or cultivated plot, 

 the ground being quite level, free from cradle hills, with few native 

 plants, and the marks of cultivation not yet entirely obliterated. 

 All this suggested a more careful consideration of the other stations. 

 A new one, near East Bay in Cape Breton, where the heather is 

 said to exist in considerable quantity, was made known to me some 

 years ago by the Hon. Mr. Ferguson, then a member for Cape 

 Breton County. The traditional history of it there is that the early 

 emigrants from the West Highlands brought heather beds with 

 them, and when these beds were in due course exhausted, and the 

 debris scattered around their dwellings, a profuse crop of heather 

 came up. This account seemed plausible, and it seemed to show 

 that the heather was certainly not indigenous at East Bay; and, 

 taking the alleged facts in connection with the obviously artificial 

 nature of the locality in Point Pleasant Park, I began to doubt 

 seriously whether the heather was not after all a plant foreign to 

 the American Continent. 



Last fall, I met with the Rev. Mr. Harvey, of St. John's, 

 Newfoundland, as a fellow-passenger across the Atlantic, on board 

 the "Nova Scotian," and, in talking over the productions of the 

 Island, we came upon the heather. I suggested to him my doubts 

 of its nativity, and asked him on his return to Newfoundland, to 

 make special enquiry with the view of ascertaining, if possible, 

 whether it was really indigenous. He has most obligingly done so, 

 and his report is rather unfavourable. He writes in the following 

 terms: "I have made careful inquiries regarding the heather in 



