50 THE PLANT WORLD. 



Out-of-door Botany is pre-eminently a science of mass 

 })henomena in Avliicli one may spend a life time in the study 

 of a very small area without exhausting it; but our purpose 

 now is to consider things in the large, on the fly, so to speak. 

 The region to be covered in the present paper begins at Grinnell, 

 Iowa, and extends westward in Iowa, through portions of 

 ISTebraska and Kansas into the mountains from Pueblo westward 

 in Colorado, thence across the deserts of Utah and Idaho to 

 Portland, and from Portland to Seattle. 



Starting from Grinnell one morning in June, 1906, we 

 awoke the followinc; mornin<>' in western Kansas, after ha^■i^g 

 passed through portions of Iowa and J^ebraska. We may well 

 pass the first day and night (jvcr with a mere mention of the 

 xerophytic societies of the hilltops, composed of com}X)sites with 

 tough stems, small willows, shoe-string, and other similar plants ; 

 the very different xerophytic societies of the gravelly mad beds, 

 with ])(>lygonums, euphorbias, chenopods, spreading grasses, 

 etc. ; the higher and the lower prairie societies Avith tlioir grasses 

 and sedges; the societies of the swamps with their rushes, cat- 

 tails and other plants, some of them too small to recognize from 

 the car window ; and the upper strata of the mixed-woods soci- 

 eties, all seen in a whirl as the train ])assed rapidly along. All 

 these are familiar to nearly everyone, and attention must be 

 directed elsewhere. 



After a night of sleep, beginning in Nebraska and ending 

 in western Kansas, the traveler finds himself in a semi-desert 

 region, Avith the familiar plant societies mentioned above left 

 far behind and the Kocky Mountains and their foothills ])lainly 

 in view to the westAvard. If he is a botanist and has not often 

 had the privilege of other knoAvledge of such a region than 

 can be gained from books and photogra])hs, he will be u|> at 

 (hiylight watching the landscape whirl by the car windoAVS, 

 taking every opportunity to get to the ground and Avill hastily 

 gather a few of the most common plants. The writer had 

 Avatched thus eae'erlv for more than an hour, Avlien finalh^ the 

 train stopped at RosAvell, a short distance east of Colorado 



