1877.] Plants in New Hampshire and Vermont. 89 
OBSERVATIONS UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS 
IN NEW HAMPSHIRE AND VERMONT! 
BY WILLIAM F. FLINT. 
ea one who has botanized must have observed that many 
of the species common in one part of the country are else- 
where replaced by different ones. We are often surprised to 
learn that our neighboring botanists find species with which we 
are most familiar to be only local or altogether wanting in their 
vicinity. 
I have been able to learn of but few attempts to find out the 
manner in which our New England flora is distributed, or to 
ascertain the causes which have placed our plants as we find 
them now. 
I do not claim to point out many of the latter, but hope that 
a few facts as to the manner in which some of the plants in the 
Connecticut Valley, and elsewhere in New Hampshire and Ver- 
mont, are found to be distributed, may not prove wholly uninter- 
esting. I shall not attempt to classify them in the same order 
as we find them arranged in the manuals, but present them, as 
nearly as possible, as they would be seen to occur by an observer 
in journeying from the sources of the rivers toward the sea. 
The most important, probably, of the causes which limit the 
range of different genera and species of plants is that of altitude, 
or the height of the land above the sea-level, as this serves to 
produce the same differences in the temperature over a small ex- 
tent of country, which change in latitude does over a larger one. 
The flora of Northern New England presents two well-marked 
divisions, depending mainly upon the different temperature 
caused by this difference in elevation, which have been termed 
the Alleghanian and the Canadian. The former is represented 
by forests composed of chestnut, oak, pitch and red pine, and the 
latter where spruce, fir, arbor vite, and beech predominate. 
It is not possible to draw a definite line for the meeting of 
these two floral districts, because differences of soil and the 
power which plants have of adapting themselves in some degree 
to climatic changes bring about a meeting ground of varying © 
width between them. 
Were one at the sources of the Connecticut, he could not fail 
to remark the very different appearance of the flora from that of 
h 1 A paper read before the meeting of the Connecticut Valley Botanical Society, 
teld at Hanover, N. H., June 6, 1876. 
