THE BRYOLOGIST 
Vol. XXI September, 1918 No. 5 
NOTES ON THE MOSSES OF NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO. 
I. SPHAGNUM 
O. E. Jennings 
It has been my intention for some time to begin the publication of a series 
of notes relating to the bryophytes collected by my wife and me during the five 
summers we have spent in the delightfully wild and little botanized region to 
the north and northwest of Lake Superior. During these expeditions we have 
spent most of the time “roughing it,” pitching our tent at some point for from 
two to three or four weeks and from this station working the surrounding terri- 
tory, sometimes so far from our tent as to necessitate sleeping out and returning 
to the tent next day. During the first season, Mr. R. H. Daily was with us 
most of the summer, but otherwise we worked by ourselves, without the services 
of either cook or guide. Altogether during the summers of 1912, 13, 14, 16, and 
17, we have established ourselves at twenty-one stations, some of these places 
having been worked two or three times at different seasons. The region thus 
covered extends for about two hundred miles along the “North Shore” of Lake 
Superior and out onto many of the islands and peninsulas, and from there north- 
east to the north end of Long Lake on the Kenogami River (Hudson Bay drain- 
age) ; north to the north end of Lake Nipigon, about a hundred miles north of 
Lake Superior; and northwest to Sioux Lookout, nearly two hundred miles 
from Lake Superior. The whole territory embraced within these points is 
perhaps twice the size of the state of New Jersey, and our field numbers, including 
all kinds of plants, have mounted to nearly eighteen thousand. 
In articles in the American Fern Journal 1 the natural features of the regions 
visited have been described to some extent. The region along the north shore 
of Lake Superior and to the north around what is really one of o.ur six “Great 
Lakes,” Lake Nipigon, is rough enough to be termed mountainous. Thunder 
Cape and St. Ignace Island along the north shore of Lake Superior rise to over 
twelve hundred feet above its waters, while especially around the southern end 
of Lake Nipigon steep knobs and even vertical cliffs rise precipitately out of 
the water to a height of several hundred feet. This Nipigon and North Shore 
region is covered very largely with a thick cap of Keewenawan diabase which 
has faulted in wide gaps or which has broken down vertically producing pali- 
1 Jennings, O. E. Notes on the Pteridophytes of the North Shore of Lake Superior. Amer. 
Fern Journ. 3 : 38-48. June, 1913; same titlen-II. 4 : 68-73. Apr.-June, 1914; Notes on the Pteri- 
dophytes of Northwestern Ontario, Amer. Fern Journ. 5 : 33-39, May, 1915; An annotated List 
of the Pteridophytes of Northwestern Ontario. Amer, Fern Journ. 8 : 38-50 and 76-88. Apr.- 
June and July-Sept., 1918. 
The July number of The Bryologist was published September 16, 1918, 
