FLORA OF THE SASKATCHEWAN AND ATHABASCA RIVER TRIBUTARIES.
By Mary T. S. Schaffer.
Another sketch appears in this magazine referring directly to the localities of whose florae I have been asked to write, so there is no need to duplcate a description of the ground covered.
As our stay was to be a long one, it was with dubious feelings that w^e asked permission to include among the necessities a plant-press and a limited supply of paper. Having collected plants from Banff to Glacier during a number of years, there were days on the earlier part of the journey when we would have been glad to get rid of the cumbersome, troublesome thing, and leave it hanging on some tree till we should return in the fall. But there came a day when a trained botanist went over the result of our perseverence, and we felt repaid for the annoyance and labor involved in gathering the unfamiliar blossoms by the wayside.
Mr. Stewardson Brown, of Philadelphia, has had them all thoroughly studied, and I herewith give a few notes, the result of his work upon them.
As far as the Wilcox Pass we found nothing particularly striking, until reaching a point at about 6000 feet we found the Pinus flexilus, its blue-green foliage betraying it quickly among the browner-green of the other trees. The cones, at that time a deep purple, vary from three to five inches in length. From there on we met many strangers (to us) of the plant world. The Picea Canadensis, not seen further south, was first noticed on the north shores of the Saskatchewan.
