THE COASTAL PLAIN OF ARKANSAS 



47 



montion the common Cercis Canaderisis and Aralia spinosa, 

 which he may possibly have mistaken for Gymnocladus and 

 Xnnthoxylum — which I did not see at all — on account of a simi- 

 larity of common names, in the latter case at least. 



From Madison on the St. Francis River to the banks of the 

 Mississippi opposite Memphis, a distance of 37 miles, the railroad 

 is built on an embankment eight or ten feet high through river 

 bottoms, too often inundated to support much permanent pop- 

 ulation.^- Descriptions of this swamp region can be found in Hum- 

 phreys and Abbot's Report on the Mississippi River (a large 



Fig. 3. Near view of prairie vegetation about three miles south of Hazen. 

 The most abundant plant in the foreground is Brauneria. 



quarto published by the U. S. War Department in 1S61 and i-e- 

 printed with some additions in 1876, which is one of the classics 

 of potamology), and in S. M. Coulter's paper on swamps above 

 referred to. Bulletin 38 of the U. S. Biological Survey, on the 



1- In April, 1912, and again a year later, the whole area is said to have been 

 submerged. During the flood of 1912, according to contemporary newspaper 

 stories, persons traveling from Memphis to Little Rock had to go by steamboat 

 as far as Madison, and even the telegraph wires along there were put out of com- 

 mission by the high water. 



THE PLANT WORLD, VOL. 17, NO. 2, 1914 



