THE COASTAL PLAIN OF ARKANSAS 41 



111 order to learn something about this unique and scientifically 

 neglected prairie I stopped a few hours at Hazen, which is near the 

 middle of it, and walked about four miles south from there, return- 

 ing by a slightly different route, keeping pretty close to a new 

 branch of the Cotton Belt Route (St. Louis Southwestern Ry.), 

 which was then not quite completed. 



The flatness of the surface of the Grand Prairie is varied by 

 occasional very shallow broad elongated depressions or sloughs, 

 which e\'idently serve as waterways in wet weather, and by numer- 

 ous lenticular mounds, perhaps due to the same unknown cause as 

 those between Arkadelphia and Little Rock," but much smaller, 

 averaging about a foot high and a few yards in diameter, and 

 hardly perceptible in silmmer except where the grass has been 

 mowed. 



The soil is a sort of yellowish silt, and at the time of my visit 

 every wagon passing along the roads through the prairie stirred 

 up great clouds of dust. The ground is perforated with crawfish 

 holes, averaging about one to a square yard, which seems to indi- 

 cate that the area becomes pretty wet at times. Like other 

 prairies, this is probably swept periodically by fire, but there was 

 very little direct evidence to be had on this point in midsummer. 



Early in the present century (about 1902, it is said) it was dis- 

 covered that this prairie was well adapted to the cultivation of 

 rice, and some newspaper accounts within a year or two preceding 

 my visit had given me the impression that the whole area was 

 about to be given over to that industry, with the consequent 

 destruction of the native vegetation. But the damage to the 

 vegetation had been overestimated, and there were (and probably 

 are even at this writing, two years later) still thousands of acres 

 of undisturbed prairie within easy reach of railroad stations. 

 The portions where the lenticular mounds are most numerous 

 will probably escape the longest, for it would be difficult to extend 

 the artificial inundation required in rice-growing to the tops of 

 the mounds. 



A botanist exploring the Grand Prairie after midsummer would 

 encounter a serious difficulty of another sort, however. At the 



^See also C. L. Webster in Am. Nat. 31: 114-120, February, 1897. 



