FLORAS OF EASTERN AND WESTERN NEWFOUNDLAND 
The Atlantic European element in the flora would seem to be a 
relic from the early Tertiary flora which occupied the then dry northern 
floor of the Atlantic and which had persisted as a small remnant upon 
the Tertiary continental shelf and at the final submergence of the 
shelf became stranded upon Newfoundland, which, as is well known, 
is bordered by a tremendous shelf, the Grand Banks. The arctic- 
alpine and Hudsonian elements, as already intimated, have presumably 
entered Newfoundland in post-Pleistocene times by way of the narrow 
Straits of Belle Isle, which are commonly closed during the winter, 
thus forming a perfectly simple bridge from the north side of the Straits 
to the Newfoundland shore. 
It is not, however, my intention to develop in this brief paper a 
theory in regard to the origin of the Newfoundland flora. The chief 
points I wish to emphasize are certain features which are of more 
practical and immediate interest to a group of ecologists. The most 
striking physiographical features of Newfoundland, so far as they 
impress the visiting botanist, may be very briefly summarized as 
follows.^ Extending from the southwest corner of the island at Cape 
Ray eastward for several miles, thence as a broad belt northward 
along the west coast to within 20 miles of the Straits of Belle Isle, is 
the Long Range of mountains. These for the most part are high 
tablelands of very diverse rock structure, the western tablelands and 
valleys and the broad foreland (20 miles wide at the north) being 
highly calcareous, consisting chiefly of limestones, marbles, calcareous 
slates, calcareous conglomerates, and in some areas of dolomite, traps 
and serpentines. The eastern ridges of the Long Range are chiefly 
granitic and they pass on their eastern flanks directly into a great 
central basin or low tableland of Archaean and chiefly acid rocks. 
This area, the Great Barrens or central tundra region of Newfoundland, 
extends, as observed from the train, for a distance of perhaps 100 
miles west and east from the eastern flanks of the Long Range to the 
lower Exploits Valley. From the lower Exploits eastward and south- 
eastward the region becomes again rolling, but without any con- 
spicuous mountains, except a few isolated granitic masses. In this 
southeastern region of the main island the rocks are essentially all 
acidic or highly silicious, so much so that the giant pulp and paper 
mills of the Harmsworth syndicate, located upon the lower Exploits 
s The most available brief account of Newfoundland physiography is a paper by 
Twenhofel in Amer. Journ. Sci. IV. 33: 1-24. 1912, 
