IOWA TO PUGET SOUND. 51 



Spring-s, and twenty-five miles from the base of Pike's Peak. 

 However often one has been deceived in distances, the impres- 

 sion of nearness is just as vivid on each new presentation of 

 mountain scenery, unless he is constantly in the midst of it, and 

 it looked a half mile to the top of the }>eak instead of the real 

 distance — thirty-five miles. It seemed that one could traverse 

 the distance from this stopping place to the top of Pike's Peak 

 in a half hour's walk and examine every sort of inteiwening 

 plant society in a very short time; for the tree-limit and the 

 snow beyond were in perfectly plain view, though we were among 

 the homes of the prairie dogs, thirty-five miles away, where a 

 very slight intervening elevation close at hand would hide the 

 whole peak in a twinkling as we passed along. 



At Roswell, the bunch hal)it was a very ai>parent cliar- 

 acteristic of the vegetation, as it had been for some distance 

 eastward into Kansas, for we were in the semi-desert at an 

 elevation of approximately 5,000 feet. Yuccas, cacti with their 

 special adaptation in fleshiness, characteristic chenopods, 

 legumes with their pubescence and other special adaptations, 

 various grasses with the bunch habit, as Boutcloua olir/ostachya, 

 :iii<l tlio buffalo grass, BwMoe dnctyloldes, with its close dense 

 tufts and spreading stolons, w^ere all noted as well as a numlier 

 of characteristic composites for most part small and tufted with 

 small amount of leaf expansion. Of the composites, the little 

 Aster ericaefolius was collected. The vegetation seemed to 

 cover the surface fairly well as one looked off for some distance, 

 and the bunch habit api>eared plainly only when seen close at 

 hand and especially on alighting from the car and walking out 

 a short distance on the prairie. 



Tn ])assing from Roswell to Colorado Springs, 5,508 above 

 the sea, and only six or seven miles from the base of Pike's 

 Peak, the conditions do not become rapidly more xerophytic, 

 though one is within a ten-hour tramp and climb of the top of 

 the ix?ak. But at Pueblo, less than forty miles south of Colo- 

 rado Springs, we found grass very scarce, except in moist 

 valleys, and cacti, yuccas, characteristic mallows and sage brush 



