GEOGRAPHIC AFFINITIES 
221 
the American Association met at Montreal in 1882, an excursion was 
made down the St. Lawrence and up the Saguenay. In writing of this 
excursion through one of Nature's botanic gardens, an active botanist 
of that time said: ''Probably the prevaiHng feeling among botanists 
at Montreal, from 'The States,' was one of surprise and disappoint- 
ment that the Canadian flora was so familiar. At Montreal I noticed 
nothing of interest either among the weeds or the wild flowers. At 
Quebec, Euphrasia officinalis was abundant on the ramparts. At 
Tadousac, Empetrum nigrum and Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea were growing 
at sea-level, the latter so abundant that children were bringing in 
pails of the berries for sale. 
"At Ha! Ha! Bay, where I had intended stopping if the flora seemed 
attractive, the only unfamiliar plant was Senecio vulgaris as an abun- 
dant weed. 
"The meeting next year at Minneapolis will doubtless offer many 
more botanical attractions to eastern botanists." 
Now, to one who has tramped the shores and clambered with the 
aid of an alpine rope over many cliffs of the lower St. Lawrence it is 
apparent that the writer of the passage above quoted was merely the 
prototype of that later group of botanists whose depth of interest in 
the problems of phytogeography finds expression in the statement that 
"it would be quite possible to prepare a fairly satisfactory description 
of the vegetation of a given region without naming a single species." 
From this superficial and uncommunicative point of view the traveller 
down the St. Lawrence might recognize and, if in a communicative 
mood, perhaps even enumerate such trees as Abies balsamea, Picea 
canadensis, or Acer rubrum and make a sort of guess as to which moun- 
tain ash, white birch, or poplar lined the shores, and he would be reason- 
ably safe in identifying Heracleum lanatum and Sambucus racemosa; 
but not one of these wide-spread and almost ubiquitous plants would 
give him the faintest indication of the botanical interest of the region. 
If, however, he overcame the inertia of travel sufficiently to walk 
three minutes from the wharf at Riviere du Loup, the last stop of the 
steamer before crossing to the Saguenay, he would discover Cornus 
suecica, an arctic species here reaching one of its southernmost outposts 
in America., Osmorhiza divaricata of southern British Columbia, Wash- 
ington and Oregon, Arabis Drummondi, var. connexa of the Rocky 
Mountains, Poa eminens of Alaska and adjacent Asia, and scores of 
other species whose presence here at once suggests the most far-reaching 
phytogeographic problems. 
