634- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bask in the sunshine, more than they possibly can while they are penned 

 up in wards, they would improve mentally and physically more rapidly 

 than they do. I do not not know of any more depressing influence 

 within the range of the possibilities than that which settles upon one 

 who has recovered his senses in an asylum, and is retained there until 

 he recovers his health ! The possibility of recovering one's health, sur- 

 rounded by insane people, is what I have always doubted, and why I 

 insisted upon leaving the asylum as soon as I did ; and I never look 

 upon such an institution without a heart-felt pang for the many sad 

 and wretched beings I know it must contain ; and with this comes the 

 still more horrible thought that there may possibly be among them 

 some who, in all justice and right, should be as free as I myself. 



THE LITTLE MISSOUEI BAD LANDS. 



By Pbofessoe T. H. McBEIDE. 



II. 



" Enew you what silence was before ? 



Here is no startle of dreaming bird 

 That sings in his sleep or strives to sing ; 



Ilere is no sough of branches stirred, 

 Nor noise of any living thing." Lowell. 



HOWEVER interesting the Bad Lands may be in their scenery 

 and in their conditions purely physical, it is only when we con- 

 sider them in their relation to life and its progress on the earth that 

 they become most attractive, most engaging. 



To describe the present flora and especially the fauna of this re- 

 gion would require no very long chapter, and yet the list of species 

 would be longer than some might suspect. Where erosion less inter- 

 rupted by the fires has been allowed to do its perfect work, there are 

 level areas of considerable extent sparsely covered with short grass, on 

 which the prong-horn, the elk, the deer, and the big-horn sheep, have 

 been wont to graze. The valleys, and even the flat tops of the buttes 

 in May, are said to abound with flowers. Cottonwood-groves occur 

 along the banks of the river, and occasionally a thicket of low box- 

 elders, plums, and various kinds of thorny shrubs, divides with the 

 sage-brush the occupancy of some sheltered ravine ; while up the 

 northern faces of some of the higher and more sloping buttes, where 

 the snow of winter lingers longest, low, ragged cedars creep in strag- 

 gling file. But, where the fires have done their part, the desolation is 

 extreme. Even the vegetation which the spring-time may have brought 

 seems to vanish from the earth, the precipitated alkali whitens the 

 valleys, and from all the naked hills comes up a glare of dazzling 



