189 
dam to Triassic, but the recent field-work of Mr. F. J. H. Merrill 
leaves little doubt that they are what Mather supposed, and we 
have here a most interesting agreement of the floral features with 
the lithological. Nols BRITTON. 
A Meeting-place for two Floras. * 
By CHARLES E. BESSEY. 
About half-way across the northern part of Nebraska, a few 
miles east of the 1ooth meridian, there is a very interesting bo- 
tanical locality. A small stream starts at a point about twenty 
or twenty-five miles south of the Niobrara River, and runs north- 
ward through a deep and winding cafion to the river mentioned. 
The surrounding country is absolutely treeless, and the surface is 
in many places thrown up into rounded hills of what must have 
Once been drifting sand. The cafion sides are very abrupt, and 
they descend in many places fully two hundred feet before the 
bottom is reached. The stream is known to the whites as Long 
Pine Creek, but to the Indians it was the Wasahancha, which 
signifies ‘“ where the pines extend far out.” Both names refer to 
the pines which have here a station so far removed from the 
mountains as to have attracted the attention of the Indians, as 
well as the early white settlers. 
In this cafion, as I found in a recent visit, there is a blending 
of the Eastern and the Western floras in a most unusual way. 
The first thing that strikes the visitor is the fact that here are 
growing great numbers of Rocky Mountain pines (Pinus ponder- 
osa, var. scopulorum). They are so abundant, and of such size 
that they are largely used in the neighborhood for lumber and for 
fuel. Subsequent examination of the country around shows 
that these pines are found along the streams or on the hills all 
the way up to the mountains of Wyoming, and they appear also 
to be connected with the heavy body of pine in the Black Hills 
in Dakota. There are none, however, eastward of this cafion, 
although the sides of the broad cafion of the Niobrara river, near 
the mouth of the creek, are dotted with scrubby pines. The In- 
dian name of the creek—the Wasahancha—is therefore most ap- 
propriate; “ where the pines extend far out.” 
88 * Read before the Botanical Club, A. A. A. S., at the N. Y. Meeting, August, 
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