114 BOTANICAL EXCURSION probably the most showy species of the genus. Its brilliant golden flowers evince a disposition to become double, even in the wild state, and we often found as many as eight or nine petals. This tendency would doubtless be fully developed by cultivation. Around the vase of these mountains we saw Blephilia neptoides, and another labiate plant no yet in flower, which we took for Pycnanthemum montanum (Michaux).
The next day (July 9th) we ascended the Grandfather, the highest as well as the most rugged and savage mountain we had yet attempted, although by no means the most ele- vated in North Carolina, as has generally been supposed. It is a sharp and craggy ridge, lying within Ashe and Burke counties, very near the north-east corner of Yancey, and cut- ting across the chain to which it belongs (the Blue Ridge), nearly at right angles. It is entirely covered with trees, ex- cept where the rocks are absolutely perpendicular ; and to- wards the summit, the Balsam Fir of these mountains, Abies bahamifera, partly, of Michaux's Flora (but not of the younger Michaux's Sylva) the A. Fraseri [Pursh), prevails, accom- panied by the Abies nigra or Black Spruce. The earth, rocks, and prostrate decaying trunks, in the shade of these trees, are carpeted with mosses and lichens ; the whole pre- senting the most perfect resemblance to the dark and sombre forests of the northern parts of New York and Vermont ; except that the trees are here much smaller. This sinai-^ larity extends to the entire vegetation ; and a list of shrubs and herbaceous plants of this mountain would w found to include a large portion of the common productions of the extreme Northern States and Canada.f Indeed the •According to Professor Mitchell's barometrical measurements, the Grandfather attains the altitude of 5,556 feet above the sea ; the i?ofl», 6,038 feet ; and the loftiest peak of the Black Mountain, 6,476 feet; the latter thus exceeds Mount Washington in New Hampshire (hitherto ac- counted the highest mountain in the United States) by more than two hundred feet.— See Jmmcan Journal of Science and Arts, vol. xxxv,p. 377- t Among those northern species which we had not previously observed
