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BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 659 
“ Graine de bœuf” Not until lately has the fruit of this tree 
been appreciated, which, together with its elegant form and 
foliage, affords an additional recommendation to the culti- 
vator. It is a shrubby tree, at the most fifteen feet high, 
with silvery-green foliage and spinescent branchlets, which 
bear bouquets of bright red berries, becoming diaphanous 
and acquiring a delicious acid when touched by the frost. 
In the gardens of Sir Wm. D. Stewart at Murthly Castle, 
Scotland, I have since seen a number of thriving shrubs, 
which that gentleman had raised from seeds gathered by 
himself on the Upper Missouri. In this species the female 
individuals are rarer than in the Canadian Buckthorn, and 
perhaps more so than in any other N. American dicecious 
ligneous plant. 
The Missouri River is the highway for travellers in this 
region. Travelling is either tedious by low water, or dan- 
gerous during the high water season of the summer months. 
The scenery, on the whole, bears a stamp of uniformity 
Which would be fatiguing, were it not for the abundance 
of animals, especially bisons, which traverse these re- 
gions, followed by packs of the large brown, the white, 
and the little barking prairie Wolf. The monarch of 
animals in these wilds is the grizzly or Missouri Bear, 
(Ursus horribilis), an animal of great size, strength, courage 
and ferocity. He feeds principally on the flesh of the bison, 
but also gathers for his vegetable diet the tubers of Pso- 
ralea esculenta, which he digs up in the gravelly plains, and 
peels with great nicety. Occasionally herds of elk and ante- 
lopes approach the river, and flocks of pelicans sun them- 
selves on the sandbar-islands, or are busy fishing in the 
turbid water. Among reptiles, the rattle-snake is abun- 
dant, especially a long variety with a bright sulphur-yellow 
£round-colour, and pale brown rhomboid markings. The 
“horned frog," as it is called, in reality a curious species of 
lizard, is also found on the tops of the arid hills near the 
great gravelly plains. ts ca 
3rd Sub-region.— Labyrinthine depressed regions, situated 
