__ Sxeept to gather supplies of the fern, which grows à 
N i 
€y are not continuous, but wherever stream 
a Aa E ME N PO iR 
AE ania pa T hope Suerte aa ee e Si tig Eads r a eam GD i a A a 
AOR Er rei le Raabe AAi t a E ly a tiny pe CE E 
and upward beyond their summits. 
-mits 
1876.] Geography and Exploration. 741 
GENERAL NOTES. 
BOTANY. 
Notes oN ALPINE AND SUBALPINE PLANTS IN Vermont. — Now 
that the frosts have seared vegetation here, and our mountains are white 
mth snow, I can make a full report to you of my summer’s work in bot- 
anizing. I have occupied myself chiefly with a careful examination of 
the higher mountains of Vermont, and find their plants much more Alpine 
v6 character than they have heretofore been credited with being, so that 
= the next edition of your manual you need not, in giving the distribu- 
tion of several species at least, skip over the Green Mountains in passing 
from the White Mountains to the Adirondacks. 
On the summit of Mount Mansfield I have found Diapensia Lapponica, 
Vaccinium cespitosum, and Asplenium viride, and on the summits of both 
Mansfield and Camel’s Hump, Polygonum viviparum, Salix Outleri, Naba- 
lus Bootii, and Aspidium fragrans. | 
plants than Willoughby itself. It is a narrow and deep gorge separating 
the bases of Mansfield and Sterling mountains. Through this “ pass 
runs a trail from Stowe Valley on the south to 
moille Valley on the north. It has long porne the name of “ 
Notch,” and will be remembered as thé place where Pursh first discovered 
Aspidium aculeatum var. Braunit. Several botanists, since Pursh’s 
day, have visited the station of this fern, — Tuckerman and Macrae and 
Frost, certainly, —- but like Pursh they seem not to have left the trail 
11 over the bottom of 
the valley. The floor of the defile is strewn with masses of sharply 
= 2 eet high on either side. Buta few rods fr 
€ right or left, we come to the foot of steep 
finer débris from the cliffs, and covered like the 
d other northern trees. It is 
the top of these 
. rise the perpendicular cliffs. These precipices 
of the pass for half a mile or more, being some 
more extensive on the western or Mansfield side than 
s 0 water fr 
ain-sides extending hi h 
g high above fall over them, 
l, they are b i fts and chutes receding far back- 
y are broken into by deep clefts aa ie Geis shest 
Precipices like rounded towers rise hundreds of feet, and their dry sum- 
are capped with a stunted growth of Abies ala. 
1 Conducted by ProF. G- L. GOODALE. 
