564 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



"81. Manataaqua is found here occasionally. 

 "84. Verna has never been taken in this vicinity. 

 "CEcanthus niveus, Phylloptera oblongifolia, and Arphia sulphurea are 

 common here." 



The Distribution of Plants. 



I have quite a number of additional facts to present upon the distri- 

 bution of plants, and will notice, first, certain features of the maritime 

 species; then of the alpine forms; and afterwards remark upon the 

 areas covered by forests. 



Maritime Plants. 



The catalogue of plants gives the names of thirty-seven species fre- 

 quenting the sea-shore, and six more will probably be discovered within 

 our limits. Botanists suppose, as these plants are mainly confined to 

 the neighborhood of the ocean, that the impregnation of the atmosphere, 

 and perhaps soil, with saline materials determines their habitat. It hap- 

 pens that many of them occur in connection with salt deposits in western 

 New York, etc. ; along the St. Lawrence river and the great lakes, and 

 in saline regions among the Rocky Mountains. A little reflection 

 upon the facts that will be presented will show that the distribution of 

 these maritime plants in North America may be a proof of oceanic sub- 

 mergence in the period intervening between the age of ice and historic 

 time. 



American botanists have frequently recorded the presence of mari- 

 time phenogamous plants in the interior of the continent, and have 

 commented upon the singularity of the circumstance. For example, 

 Prof. J. A. Paine, Jr., in the Regents Report of the New York State 

 Cabinet for 1865, enumerates yuncus Baltiats among the plants of Gen- 

 esee county, at a locality over three hundred feet above Lake Ontario, 

 and twenty miles south of it, associated with Zygadenus glaucus and 

 Solidago Houghtonii, found only on the north shore of Lake Michigan. 

 It is a sea-side plant, native in the northern European and American 

 coasts. "For its introduction to the great lakes it is just as dependent 

 on the ocean as are Ranunculus Cymbalaria, Atriplex hastata, Salicornia 

 herbasea, Najas major, Ruppia maritima, Trigoclin maritimum, yuncus 



