1911] © Fernald,— Expedition to Newfoundland 125 
was an attractive and strange grass which proves to be Hordeum 
boreale Scribner & Smith, a species heretofore known only from 
Alaska to northern California. But it was growing late and I had 
so often been tardy at Mr. Grant’s table that I hastened back this 
last day to leave if possible a better impression of my punctuality 
and appreciation and found a Labradorian meal which would please 
the most epicurean palate,—a choice of young puffins or young 
divers, with greens of Atriplex patula, var. hastata. 
Although the boreal plants above enumerated and many others 
not here mentioned are the species which at first attract the New 
England botanist visiting the Straits of Belle Isle, they are after all 
surpassed in geographic interest by a large number of species which 
one might be tempted to ignore. Mingled with the northern species 
on the terrace-slopes are the following and many more which to the 
New Englander make a very tame list: Phegopteris Dryopteris and 
polypodioides, Botrychium virginianum, Equisetum scirpoides, Milium 
effusum, Cinna latifolia, Carex Deweyana, vaginata, laxiflora, var. 
leptonervia, and capillaris, var. elongata, Clintonia borealis, Streptopus 
amplexifolius, Microstylis monophyllos, Ranunculus abortivus, Actaea 
rubra, Mitella nuda, Ribes triste, Geum macrophyllum, Viola Selkirkii, 
Viola renifolia, Conioselinum chinense, Chiogenes hispidula, Galium 
triflorum, Linnaea borealis, var. americana, Solidago macrophylla, 
and Petasites palmata. If one were to enumerate the more typical 
woodland plants of northern New England and eastern Canada 
I am quite sure that all of these would be in the list. And it is for 
just this reason that their occurrence on the terraces and tablelands 
north of the Straits of Belle Isle is of greatest interest. 
In such accounts as I have found (except possibly Cartier’s) the 
coasts of the Straits of Belle Isle are described as desolate and bare, 
and even Cartier, in 1534, entering the Straits and anchoring at Blanc 
Sablon, was so impressed with the barrenness that he wrote: ‘‘If the 
land was as good as the harbors there are, it would be an advantage; 
but it should not be named the New Land! but [a land of]? stones 
and rocks frightful and ill shaped, for in all the said north coast I did 
not see a cart-load of earth, though I landed in many places. Except 
at Blane Sablon ® there is nothing but moss and small stunted woods; 
‘Cartier had just come up the east coast of Newfoundland and apparently took 
ae to be part of the same region. 
eted phrase inserted by the translator. 
* At Blanc Sablon the shores and flat country back of the shores are covered with 
sand. 
