82 Rhodora [May 
preceding paragraph, and reasoning from our knowledge of the 
inland extension along the Mississippi Valley of so many character- 
istically southern species, it would on first thought appear that 
Crataegus viridis L. has merely followed in the wake of its southern 
companions, with which it is so often found in the Southern States. 
That any species should ascend the former bed of this ancient 
inland sea for so great a distance as to Saint Louis, Missouri, without 
leaving along the path of its invasion a certain number of scattered 
individuals is scarcely believable; and I will proceed to show the 
futility of longer believing that Crataegus viridis L., and its many 
forms, came up the Mississippi Valley to Saint Louis, Missouri, and 
to demonstrate that any species is much more likely to skip large 
sections of country in going down such a valley. 
Having observed and studied Crataegus viridis in northern Florida, 
southern Alabama, southern Mississippi, Louisiana, southern Arkan- 
sas and southeastern Texas during the past fifteen years, I have 
noted that the species inhabits regions of relatively low altitude, 
sometimes straying to comparatively high ground near by. I have 
visited many places in northern and northeastern Arkansas, and have 
collected at Hoxie, Jonesboro, Marked Tree and Paragould in that 
state, and as far as I have observed the tree, Crataegus viridis L. 
is rare there. In adjacent Missouri I have noted as many as fifteen 
of twenty trees of this species in Dunklin County, a half dozen or so 
in Butler County, and the species is quite unknown in Scott, Stod- 
dard, Wayne, Ripley, Carter, Oregon, Shannon, Howell, Texas, 
Wright, Webster, Greene, Christian, Taney, Stone, Barry and Mc- 
Donald Counties, a strip reaching from the Mississippi River to the 
western boundary of the State, where I have done much collecting. 
Some eight or ten years ago I found at Webb City and at Joplin, 
Missouri, a great colony of Crataegus viridis or forms of that species, 
and as this locality is mostly over one thousand feet in altitude, it 
seemed to me that these forms could not be the true Crataegus viridis 
of Linnaeus, which is a coastal species and inhabits low altitudes. 
Several years investigations have shown that this great colony of 
Virides! extends west into Kansas, southwest into and across Okla- 
homa, and as far as Llano, Dallas, and Fort Worth, Texas. 
That this great colony, which I shall herein designate as the Western 
1T here use the sectional name Virides for Crataegus viridis and the many forms 
which are closely related to it. 
