240 
M. L. FERNALD 
and about Notre Dame Bay, are forced to import all the limestone 
used in their mills from the west coast. The southeastern peninsula 
of Newfoundland, the Avalon Peninsula, separated from the main 
island by an extremely narrow and low isthmus which now consists 
chiefly of a flat peat bog, is, like the adjacent main island, composed 
essentially of silicious and acidic rocks. In the extreme southwest 
also, the region from Cape Ray to Bay St. George, the rocks are chiefly 
Carboniferous sandstones with little or no calcareous matter, or with 
such areas small and scattered, and covered extensively with acid 
peats. Projecting far to the north of the main island and bordered on 
the northwest and north by a broad foreland of horizontal limestones 
quite to the Straits of Belle Isle is the North Peninsula or Petit Nord; 
its interior practically unknown, but its western, northwestern and 
eastern tablelands almost exclusively of calcareous rock. Such, 
roughly, are the parts of Newfoundland as yet known to botanists, 
four distinct areas: the calcareous western region north of Bay St. 
George, and the North Peninsula; the acid central tundra region; the 
acid southeastern; and the acid southwestern sections. 
So strikingly different are these areas in the composition of their 
flora that it is difficult to enumerate more than a few score of species 
which are generally distributed over the island. To the botanist who 
has spent a season exploring along the west coast, where the soils are 
calcareous and extremely fertile and the valleys sheltered and sunny, 
a transfer of base for another season to the southeast is like entering 
another world. The conspicuous elements in the flora of the west 
coast are the plants which we have come through long experience to 
associate with highly calcareous soils, while only upon such acid 
areas as the Carboniferous sandstones from Cape Ray to Bay St. 
George, the raw humus of mountain crests or peat bogs, or the granitic 
mountains at the eastern edge of the Long Range, do we find the plants 
commonly recognized as inhabiting acid or silicious areas. The valleys 
of the west coast have long been recognized as the most promising 
regions of the island for agriculture and adventurous and far-seeing 
young men from England and Ireland have undertaken extensive 
agricultural enterprises in the West; and during the past season the 
successful raising of wheat and the erection of a grist-mill in this 
region have been heralded by the Associated Press as epoch-making 
achievements. Contrasted with this favorable condition for agricul- 
ture, which prevails through the valleys and the lower levels of the 
