170 LAWSON NOTES ON SOME NOVA SCOTIAN PLANTS. 



Newfoundland, and find that at a place called Caplin Bay, two 

 miles from Ferryland, which is about thirty-five miles south of 

 St. John's, there is a bed of heather, of no great extent, but healthy 

 and flourishing. Ferryland is one of the oldest settlements in the 

 island. There Lord Baltimore built a house two hundred years 

 ago, and made it the seat of Government. The tradition is that 

 some Scotch settlers, or possibly Irish, brought out beds filled with 

 heather, and the seeds produced the present growth. At all events, 

 it has been growing there for some generations. At Renews, about 

 twenty or thirty miles from Ferryland, there is also a quantity of- 

 heather, supposed to have been derived from the Caplin Bay growth, 

 but this is only conjecture. I am told that the heather is as fine as 

 any on the hills of Scotland, and shows no signs of degeneracy. 

 A few sprigs of it were brought here this summer. It is said that 

 attempts have been made to transplant heather, but without success. 

 Possibly the seeds alone will grow." 



I visited, with Mr. Jack, another locality on the Peninsula, 

 where the heather was reported to grow. After a slight search we 

 found it growing on a piece of wild land within the cemetery fence, 

 but that had never been cultivated in any way, and was still covered 

 with the alders, kalmias, ledum, blueberry, cranberry, and other 

 genuine native plants. I cannot see any reason to doubt the 

 heather plants being native in that particular place. Another fact 

 is specially worthy of note. Mr. Robert Boak, senr., recently 

 informed me that he had seen the heather growing in a particular 

 spot in the Tower Woods thirty- five years ago. The place is 

 quite wild, distant from any dwelling or camp. The original cradle 

 hills are intact, covered by their characteristic native plants, and the 

 heather must have been native there. 



In consideration of all the facts above detailed, and others to which 

 it is not necessary to allude, I have arrived at the following conclu- 

 sions : 



That Calluna vulgaris has been originally a native indigenous 

 plant, and still exists as such in very small quantity on the Penin- 

 sula of Halifax; that it is probably indigenous also to other parts 

 of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland ; that in Point Pleasant Park, 



