160 
WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 24, 1897. 
In the absence of the President, Vice-President V. P. Allen 
presided. There were 28 persons present. 
The scientific program was as follows: 
1. By Mr. Arthur Hollick, “A fossil Phragmites from Staten 
Island.”’ (Published in this issue of the BULLETIN.) 
2. By Mr. E. O. Wooton, “ Remarks on some of the rarer 
Plants of New Mexico.” 
Mr. Wooton sketched briefly the botanical regions of New 
Mexico, dividing the territory by differences in the flora into (a) 
the river valleys, (b) the table-lands or mesas,(c) the dry, rocky 
and narrow mountain ranges, and (d) those areas which are of 
uniformly high altitude and have numerous mountain ranges 
closely associated and more or less timbered. He also traced 
upon a map the routes traversed by most of the botanical collec- 
tors who have visited New Mexico, beginning with Pike and in- 
cluding Long, Gregg, Wislizenus in 1846, Emory, Marcy, Sit- 
greaves and Woodhouse, with the work of the Mexican Boundary 
and other surveys, 1849 and after. Mr. Wooton was himself 
practically the first to make collections in the southeast section of 
the territory, a very interesting botanical region, with high moun- 
tains, some of which were illustrated by photographs. Specimens 
of Mr. Wooton’s collecting were then shown, exhibiting about 35 
flowering plants and ferns, and including among those familiar in 
the East: Pellaea atropurpurea, Cystopteris fragilis, Pterts aquilina 
and Cheilanthes tomentosa. 
Discussing Mr. Wooton’s presentation, Dr. Rusby spoke of 
his own former travels in New Mexico, and of various incidents of 
that journey, as of the discovery of Primula Parryi on the top of 
Gray’s Peak (central Arizona), blooming on July 3d under three 
or four inches of snow which had just fallen. 
Mr. Rydberg compared some of the features presented by the 
sand region of Central Nebraska, referring to Muhlenbergia pungens 
and other so-called “ blow-out grasses” of the sand-hills, and de- 
scribing the formation of the characteristic “ blow-outs,” or hol- 
lows, originating in spots where the grasses had died out, and 
deepening rapidly, sometimes to 300 feet, producing a country 
where the hills are moving every year, and where he, when camp- 
