36 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



everything — even to the practice of the aboriginal arts — better 

 than an Indian can ; but no man, white, black, or red, can im- 

 prove on nature. 



Only in the immediate vicinity of the Bad Lands did I find 

 the white-margined spurge, or snow-on-the-mountains (Eu- 

 phorbia marginata). The bracts and leaves that subtend the 

 umbel of inconspicuous flowers are white-margined, or wholly 

 white, and hence, no doubt, are useful in attracting insects to 

 the flowers and thus helping to bring about their cross-pollina- 

 tion. In the east this spurge is often cultivated in gardens for 

 its handsome foliage, but here, in Nature's vast garden, with 

 natural selection acting as gardener, we can enjoy the beauty 

 of the plants without a thought of labor. They are noticeably 

 abundant by July 4th. 



No one could fail to take notice of the prickly poppies 

 which grow along the roadsides at lower levels, especially 

 where gutters have been carved during rainstorms. In similar 

 places we are pretty sure to find the skunk-weed {Cleome ser- 

 riilata) in rank exuberance and with an equally rank smell. 

 Here, too, Gaiira coccinea is content to abide. 



Of shrubs having flowers or flower-clusters more or less 

 conspicuous we have occasionally the June-berry along shaded 

 w'ater-courses ; always the choke-cherry in similar places ; wild 

 plum, forming dense thickets on the lowlands; trailing 

 Mahonia — "waniyetu wahpe," or winter leaf, in the pictur- 

 esque language of the Sioux — in a few of the deeper ravines ; 

 wolfberry {Syuiplioricarpos occidentalis), that luxuriates on 

 all the flood-flats of the creeks ; bufifalo currant (Ribes aureum) 

 overhanging the water from rocky banks; and sand-cherry, a 

 distinctive sand-hill undershrub, overspreading the dunes, and 

 when in blossom filling the ambient air with a splendid per- 

 fume. Among trailing and climbing vines there are a species 

 of Clematis that tumbles over the brush-piles and fallen trees ; 

 Virginia creeper and sweet-scented grape (Vitis vulpina), 

 common, both, in the woodlands along streams ; and Celastrus 



