86 
species were found readily, especially various cladonias, with 
differing forms of apothecia ; physcias, with their tiny black spore 
disks, on tree bark; peltigeras, and others. She explained the 
. characteristics of the lichens, which, to her, seem particularly 
interesting, because they are so primitive, and yet adaptive to 
various environments; flexible and plastic and not so fixed in 
their habits as the higher, flowering plants, which have adopted 
definite forms and keep to them; the lichens are still experi- 
menting in their methods of subsistence and reproduction, and are 
capable of renewal by cell divisions, or by casting off parts of 
their thalli (soredia) which grow into new individuals when con- 
ditions may not encourage, even for many years, the production 
of spore bearing organs. Mrs. Anderson pointed out that certain 
species favor one kind of rocks, and others another, and as the 
region around Cushetunk Mountain is remarkably varied in geo- 
logical formations, quite different species are found sometimes 
exclusively on one kind of rock and not on the others. Cushetunk 
Mountain is a horse-shoe shaped ridge of basalt rock, similar 
in nature to that of the Palisades, enclosing a sandstone valley 
(Brunswick shale phase of the Newark formation). The same 
sandstone is found on the south flank of the horseshoe, then an- 
other narrow ridge of basalt, and to the west, are successively, 
limestone, gneiss, limestone, quartzite and sandstone (Stockton 
formation), each sustaining characteristic lichen forms. The re- 
gion would be interesting to study to see if the higher plants show 
differences based on the differing rocks. Two large limestone quar- 
ries were interesting, and a solitary plant of the lime-loving 
maidenhair spleenwort had established itself in a crevice left 
when one of the openings was abandoned, at least fifty years ago- 
Extraordinarily large and long branched plants of the night- 
shade, Solanum Dulcamara, grew on the walls. Another Solanum, 
S. carolinense, was found with persistent yellow berries from the 
previous fall, in abandoned plowland, underlaid by the Kittatiny 
limestone, north of the quarries. (Does this genus prefer lime- 
Stone soils?) Some algae and lichens had become established = 
the raw limerock. Notable mineral features were incipient stalactit- 
ic formations, deposited by water creeping down an overhanging 
wall, into oddly lobed and fluted buff-colored smooth-surfaced 
masses; and a bright bluish coloring on some of the rock, poss 
ibly due to a small amount of manganese. On the farmhouse 0? 
