1911] Fernald,— Expedition to Newfoundland 113 
of July 3d as the “ Bruce” (now lying at the bottom of Cabot Strait) 
approached Port aux Basques we gazed with delight upon the great 
granitic tablelands, their summits and slopes so covered with snow 
and ice that it was difficult to realize that less than two days before 
we had left New England sweltering in untempered heat and dust. 
So here, at our first landing on the island, we almost regretted that 
we had ticketed through to the Bay of Islands (140 miles north of 
Port aux Basques), for surely no country could be more tempting to a 
botanist from farther south nor hold out more hope of boreal plants 
than this first spot to meet our expectant gaze. But the train would 
not wait for us to climb the mountains so, making mental note that 
we must return to explore the region of Port aux Basques and the 
Cape Ray Mountains, we entered the dining car and had breakfast 
while the train was surging along winding valleys and around hills 
or making its way across the less treacherous parts of extensive moors 
and bogs. By the time breakfast was over and we settled down 
to uninterrupted observation of the landscape we had passed under 
more snow-covered tablelands and were following the western flank 
of the Long Range through the Carboniferous sandstones north of 
Cape Ray. The region was in places heavily forested, but with 
occasional extensive bogs which increased in abundance and area as 
we approached the coast. From the train they seemed exactly like 
our New England sphagnum bogs, except that there Arethusa grew in 
close colonies forming brilliant spots, as if pots of fifty or more 
finely flowered plants were set here and there upon the barren; the 
Wet places were often densely carpeted with the little dwarf birch, 
Betula nana L., var. Michauzii (Spach) Regel;! and there were great 
carpets bright copper-colored with a cotton-grass which I recognized 
as my own Eriophorum callitrix, var. erubescens, a beautiful plant 
which was thus far known only from Newfoundland and which I had 
seen only in the herbarium. Such bogs, covered with the Eriophorum 
and the Betula, soon began the tantalizing habit, as it seemed to us, of 
appearing whenever the train whistled for a station but just as regu- 
larly disappearing before the station was actually reached. We kept 
up a continuous “hide and seek” with the Eriophorum and the Betula 
for some hours but were unable to catch them near a railway station, 
} 
1 
. = this paper the authors of species and varieties are given only for such plants 
not included in Gray’s Manual, ed. 7. 
