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M. L. FERNALD 
barren district. It is sufficiently evident to "him who runs" that the 
southern coastal plain plants, including such extreme austral genera 
as Schizaea, Bartonia, and Xyris, are in the acid regions of Newfound- 
land not because these regions are subarctic in climate but because the 
plants there find the acid soils which abound in the coastal plain region 
of the southeastern United States where these genera also occur. 
It is equally patent that the calcicolous arctic species which abound 
on the warm west coast of the island are there not because that is the 
warmest and most temperate region of the island, but because they 
there find the calcareous soils which are essentially like those in the 
other areas where they abound. 
Now, as a corollary of this analysis one very striking feature comes 
out. This is the complete absence from acid central and southeastern 
Newfoundland of many Hudsonian and arctic-alpine species of acid 
Labrador and the granitic mountains of eastern Quebec, New England, 
and northern New York, species which are so general upon the moun- 
tains of New Hampshire and Maine and in the acid Labrador region 
that one would inevitably assume that they must abound in New- 
'foundland. Nevertheless, two centuries of botanizing in Newfound- 
land by hundreds of good botanists, ranging in acumen from Sir Joseph 
Banks and Bachelot de la Pylaie to the most humble amateur, has 
failed to reveal in Newfoundland such widely spread oxylophytes as 
Arenaria groenlandica (fig. 7), the commonest of plants on all granitic 
mountains of New England, as well as a widely dispersed plant of 
Labrador and Greenland; Viola palustris, which borders the mountain 
brooks of New England, the granitic Table-top Mountain of Gaspe, 
Labrador and the general northern regions; Salix herbacea (fig. 8), 
the little willow which carpets the wet humus of New England and 
Labrador mountains; Cardamine bellidifolia, abundant in sheltered 
pockets of granitic rocks of New Hampshire, Maine, Table-top Moun- 
tain, and acid northern regions; and so on through a long, long list. 
A few species such as Poa laxa, Hierochloe alpina, Luzula spicata, 
Salix argyrocarpa, Betiila glandulosa, Phyllodoce coerulea, and Cassiope 
hypnoides, which are very abundant in all our granitic mountain 
regions of New England, Labrador, and the far North, have been 
found at one or, in rare cases, two isolated stations in Newfoundland. 
But it is obvious that they are rare and have just made their debut 
on the island. 
In connection with this extreme paucity of the oxylophytic arctic- 
