1923] PALMER, THE RED RIVER FOREST, AT FULTON, ARKANSAS 9 



great migrations and sudden catastrophes. It would contain episodes 

 of bold adventure and sudden turns of fortune, and accounts would not be 

 lacking of ancient feuds, of friendships and firm alliances. The annals of 

 these strange events are written in an obscure and varied language, but 

 for the characters of which science is finding a key and enabling us to piece 

 together portions here and there. Its early fragmentary records, im- 

 pressed upon clay or inscribed upon stone lie deep buried in hills and plains. 

 But in the living forests also the runic lines are scattered about and may 

 often be read in characters of leaf and bud and flower, in atavisms and 

 reversions toward ancient types, in strange associations and chains from 

 which many links are missing. Here we come across small colonies iso- 

 lated in some retreat far removed from their kind and kindred, and there 

 we find in our northern forest a single representative of a tropical family 

 or a species that appears to have survived from an earlier period. These 

 larger questions and the romance of science they involve are, to be sure, 

 somewhat beyond the scope of the present paper, which proposes only to 

 describe briefly the ligneous flora of a small area particularly rich in species 

 of the southern forest belt. Such localities, however, are replete with 

 suggestions and evidence regarding the history and evolution of our floras. 

 Nor could we hope to find even in the rich luxuriance of the tropical jungles 

 nor amid the weird forms of the antipodal desert more interesting fields 

 for investigating such questions than in our familiar American forests. 



In that magnificent forest that but a century or so ago covered nearly all 

 of eastern North America from the valley of the St. Lawrence and the 

 Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico beyond the Mississippi, civilization and settle- 

 ment have made great changes. Vast areas have been cleared and brought 

 under agriculture. Axe and saw and fire-brand employed unceasingly 

 have laid low magnificent stands of conifers and hard wood species; 

 swamps have been drained and mountain sides denuded and cities and 

 towns now flourish where was lately the heart of the wilderness. Bene- 

 ficent as this progress in the main doubtless is, even though, as we are 

 often reminded, it was prosecuted in many cases with little regard to present 

 economy or future need, yet one cannot help reflecting with regret upon 

 the tremendous interest and value that would have attended a compre- 

 hensive survey of the whole region under modern scientific methods, had 

 such a thing been possible, while it was still practically intact. Even 

 now, although we are beginning to take stock of what remains and to talk 

 of conservation and reforestation, in many of the more recently settled 

 parts of the country the work of destruction goes on unchecked. In 

 travelling through portions of the South and Southwest one still commonly 

 sees crops of cotton and corn planted in "deadenings," where the smaller 

 plants have been cleared away and thousands of splendid specimens of 

 Oaks, Hickories, Elms, Gums and other trees have been "girdled" and 

 left to slow decay. One still sees in such sections each spring huge piles 

 of logs and brush brought together to be burned and got rid of as so much 



