80 Flora of the Western States. [February, 



first ride alone, and the time would come when I should look back to 

 the incident with great interest. 



" As I placed my hand on the throttle-valve handle, I was undecided 

 whether I would move slowly, or with a fair degree of speed ; but believ- 

 ing that the road would prove safe, and preferring, if We did go down, to 

 go handsomely, and without any evidence of timidity, I started with 

 considerable velocity, passed the curve over the creek safely, and was 

 soon out of hearing of the cheers of the vast assemblage. At the end of 

 two or three miles, I reversed the valves, and returned without accident 

 to the place of starting — having thus made the first railroad trip by 

 locomotive on the Western Hemisphere." 



# bscrbatxons on tilt <#Iornoflbe ^testern ^tnttB. 



[continued from page 13.] 



As we proposed in these articles to consider only the native or sponta- 

 neous products of our Western soil, we necessarily omit those vegetables 

 which are chiefly interesting to the agriculturist. We here write as a 

 naturalist , pleased only with the wild tenants of the woodlands and 

 prairies, and doubly interested in them, because, like the aborigines of 

 our country, they are rapidly retiring before the advancing hosts of the 

 cereals, the fruits, the grasses, and the sordid weeds. 



In the " West," that is, in the basin of the Mississippi river and its 

 tributaries, we distinguish clearly enough, three kinds of lands — the 

 Barrens, or upland woods, whether plain or broken ; the Prairies, 

 whether level or rolling ; and the Bottoms, lying low, and perfectly level. 

 Eespecting the barrens, we observe that scarcely a century has passed 

 since the primeval forest, wild, gloomy and grand, was everywhere 

 unbroken, except by the Indian fires which are believed to have caused 

 the prairies. But now, their range is generally circumscribed, and 

 reduced to parks and wood-lots, standing here and there, trimmed and 

 fenced, as if only awaiting the leisure of the owner, to fall, like their 

 companions, before the ax, or perish by the lingering death of the girdle. 



This destruction of the forests, by the early settlers of the country, is 

 to a certain extent, necessary ; but in general, it has been carried on to 

 an unreasonable and ruinous extent. They seem to have been actuated 

 by a passionate dislike to every thing in the form of foliage, or shade. 

 Death to the forest trees — to the groves — indiscriminate, and to the 



