178 LAWSON NOTES OX SOME NOVA SCOTIAN PLANTS. 



garden. More recently, some gold hunters, supposing that the hushes 

 indicated gold, dug a few small holes upon the ground, but without 

 success. Fire passed over one corner of the ground a few years ago, 

 previous to which, they had about disappeared, and I have thought that 

 the Indians destroyed them ; or might it be that the seed comes from the 

 white flower, and that whites and moose destroyed them before getting 

 large enough to bear flowers. I will get my friend Balcom (deputy 

 surveyor) to draw me a rough sketch of the locality, and take it to you 

 when I go to Halifax this week. 



Yours very truly, 



D. W. Archibald. 

 Sheet Harbor, 17th Jan., 1876. 



[Since this paper was read to the Institute, the following com- 

 munication from Dr. Asa Gray, has appeared in " The Garden," 

 an English periodical, for which I am indebted to Mr. Jack's 



kindness :] 



The Ling or Heather ( Calluna vulgaris) re-discovered in Massachu- 

 setts. The now well-known patch of Calluna in Tewkesbury, which was 

 discovered by Mr. Jackson Dawson, nine or ten years ago, was then the 

 only one known in the United States, or indeed on the continent. Up to 

 this time the only contradiction to the current aphorism, " there are no 

 Heather in America," came from Newfoundland, where Calluna was 

 known to occur, although few botanists had ever seen specimens of it. 

 It required some hardihood, as well as a clear conception of the causes 

 which have ruled over the actual distribution of our species in former 

 times, to pronounce that this Tewkesbury patch of Heather was indigen- 

 ous. The discoveries soou afterwards in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton 

 still left a wide hiatus. This was partially bridged over by the detection 

 by Mr. Pickard, a Scotch gardener, of a similarly very restricted station 

 in Maine, or Cape Elizabeth, near Portland. We have now the satisfac- 

 tion of recording a second station in Massachusetts, not far from the 

 former one. Mr. James Mitchell, of Andover, is the present discoverer, 

 and the station is in the western part of Andover, half mile north-east of 

 Haggett's Pond, and five miles north of Tewkesbury station. Mr. Mit- 

 chell accidentally met with this patch last summer when berrying, and 

 being a Scotchman, recognized it, took home a sprig of it, and at a sub- 

 sequent visit, grubbed up one or two small plants, which a neighbor still 

 has in cultivation. A fresh branch taken by him from the wild plants 

 this summer is now before me. It proves to be of the green and 

 emootbish variety of Calluna, precisely like the Tewkesbury plant. 

 Small as the new patch is said to be, it will serve to confirm the opinion 

 long ago expressed, for a second station greatly diminishes the very small 

 chance of its having been casually or in any way introduced through 





