40 



ROLAND M. HARPER 



vation, the trees suddenly become scarcer and the traveler finds 

 himself in a prairie, something rather exceptional for the coastal 

 plain. From about Lonoke to DeVall's Bluff, a distance of some 

 25 miles, one can look for miles and miles north and south over a 

 vast level grassy plain, interrupted by occasional clumps, strips 

 and groves of hardwood trees. This particular prairie area, 

 known as Grand Prairie, was traversed and mapped by Nuttall 

 over ninety years ago, and mapped again by Sargent (or by 

 Harvey for him) in the ninth volume of the Tenth Census, and 



Fig. 1. Qiiercus palustris in a prairie slough about one and one-half miles 

 south of Hazen, Prairie County. Herbaceous vegetation in the foreground. 



has been described superficially in some of the works mentioned at 

 the beginning of this paper, perhaps best in the U. S. soil sur- 

 veys of Prairie County and the Stuttgart area. But to this day 

 no one seems to have attempted to list the plants growing there, 

 or pubhshed any photographs of the vegetation. (The fact that 

 this very interesting vegetation, traversed by a comparatively 

 old and important railroad, has remained undescribed so long 

 seems to indicate a singular apathy on the part of modern phyto- 

 geographers.) 



