34 Lackawanna Institute. 



grow the rare fern Asplenium montanum and one plant 

 known nowhere else in the State, viz. : Potentilla tridentata. 

 East and southeast of Scranton the Moosic range rises grad- 

 ually into and partly coalesces with the broad plateau— the 

 Pocono Mountain, which sweeps away to the east, northeast 

 and southeast w T ith a general elevation in this region of from 

 1800 to 2100 feet. This is naturally a wilderness area, much 

 of it rocky or barren, and in it occur numerous swamps, peat- 

 bogs and cold mountain ponds, which are sources of the 

 brooks which feed the Delaware, the Lehigh, the Lack- 

 awanna and the Susquehanna. Here occur occasional tracts — 

 all too few at the present day — of the primeval forest, their 

 dark, cool shades lighted up by the torches of Rhododendron 

 Mowers in June and July. I have particularly in mind Le- 

 high Pond, surrounded by a sphagnum bog, and a large tract 

 of the virgin forest. In the cold sphagnum are the heaths, 

 orchids and sedges of Labrador and Northern Europe, here 

 almost on their southern limit. Such are: Kalmia glauca, 

 Ledum latifolium, Andromeda polifolia, Carex limosa, Carex 

 Magellanica and Eriophorum vaginatum. In the half-light of 

 the forest bordering, on the crumbling trunks of fallen trees, 

 under tall pines, spruces and fragrant balsams, spring the 

 pink Oxalis, the odd Indian-cucumber, the Pappoose- Flower 

 {Trillium erectum) and dusky orchids like Habenaria orbicu- 

 lata, Habenaria Hookeri, the Coral-root and the pink Moc- 

 casin-flower (Cyprepedium acaule). All of this is in delight- 

 ful contrast with the areas outside, desolated by the axe and 

 the saw, and now exhibiting only ghastly dead trunks, oc- 

 casionally left standing, the bare rocks and intervening 

 wastes covered chiefly by Red Raspberry and Blackberry 

 bushes, the Wild Red Cherry and the Bristly Elder. In sev- 

 eral localities in the ponds on the Moosic and Pocono, as 

 well as in the valley, occurs Orontium aquaticum in abund- 

 ance, supposed to be a coast plant, but extending, according 

 to Professor Porter, far into the Alleghenies, even 300 miles 

 from the sea. At the head of Little Roaring Brook on the 

 Moosic Mountain, near Tobyhanna on the Pocono, and prob- 

 ably elsewhere, occurs perhaps the most interesting species of 



