NOTES ON THE MOUND FLORA OF ATCHISON COUNTY, 
MISSOURI. 
BY B. F. BUSH. 
Having concluded that Atchison County, Missouri, on 
account of its extreme northwestern position, would prove 
a fertile field for botanizing, I consulted with Dr. Trelease 
upon the advisability of making a thorough investigation of 
that part of the State, and he very generously placed me 
in shape to begin the work. 
About the middle of August, 1893, I made my first trip 
to that place, and was struck at once by the remarkable 
line of loess mounds running parallel with the Missouri 
River in Missouri, from Hamburg in Iowa, down to a few 
miles south of Saint Joseph, Missouri, where the last 
bald-headed mound appears. 
These singular mounds are evidently the result of the 
glacial period, when great masses of ice were borne toward 
the equator, until they were stranded along the low rocky 
bluffs of the Missouri River, and as they melted, the mud 
and debris settled to the bottom and thus formed these 
mounds. 
These mounds are very irregular and jagged, running in 
straight lines, or else in fantastic loops and curves, often 
abruptly terminating in a very high perpendicular wall, 
which is almost unaffected by the action of the weather: 
or commonly descending gently to the level bottom which 
surrounds all sides except on the east. ; 
At a distance these mounds appear to be terraced, as if 
furrowed by the plow, but on a closer examination it is 
revealed that the apparent terraces are trails made by cattle, 
which are nearly always to be found grazing on them. 
These trails are about four feet apart and either follow a 
horizontal line around the mounds, or else gradually incline 
(121) 
