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and southwestern portions of the United States, besides supporting 

 the vegetation common to the whole Atlantic region or 'Eastern 

 Province.' In this section of the country many species of the botanical 

 districts named, in receding from their several centers of abundance, 

 overlap each other, or reach their latitudinal or longitudinal limits 

 of natural distribution; thus with the beech, sugar maple, the various 

 oaks and other trees of the north, grow the bald cypress, the tupelo 

 gum, and the water locust of the south, and the catalpa and pecan 

 of the southwest ; while other trees such as the buckeyes, honey locust, 

 black locust, coffee-bean, etc., especially characteristic of the country 

 west of the Alleghanies, reach here their maximum of abundance. 

 At the same time, other trees of more extended distribution grow 

 scarcely anywhere else to such majestic size as they do here in the 

 rich alluvial bottoms, the deep soil of which nourishes black walnuts, 

 tulip trees, sycamores, white ashes, and sweet gums of astonishing 

 dimensions. 



"The mixed woods of the lower Wabash Valley consist of upwards 

 of ninety species of trees, including all of those which reach a maxi- 

 mum height of over twenty feet ; these are distributed through about 

 twenty-five orders and fifty genera. In the heavy forests of the rich 

 bottom-lands more than sixty species usually grow together, though 

 in various localities different species are the predominating ones. 



"In the heavy forests of the bottom-lands, which in many places 

 have entirely escaped the ravages of the ax, the magnitude of the 

 timber is such as is unknown to the scant woods of the eastern states, 

 the stiff, monotonous pineries of the north, or the scrubby growth of 

 other portions .... The approximate height above the ground beneath 

 of the average tree-top level is about one hundred and thirty feet — 

 the lowest estimate after a series of careful measurements — while the 

 occasional, and by no means infrequent, 'monarchs,' which often 

 tower apparently for one-third their height above the tree-top line, 

 attain an altitude of more than one hundred and eighty feet, or 

 approach two hundred feet. 



"Of the ninety to a hundred species of trees of the lower Wabash 

 Valley, about seventy exceed the height of forty feet; forty-six 

 (perhaps fifty) exceed seventy feet in height; and about thirty are 

 known to reach or exceed the height of one hundred feet. Of the 

 latter class, as many as nine are known certainly to reach, or even 

 exceed, the altitude of one hundred and fifty feet, while four of them 

 (sycamore, tuHp-poplar, pecan, and sweet ,gum) attain, or go beyond, 

 an elevation of one hundred and seventy-five feet! The maximum 

 elevation of the tallest sycamore and tulip trees is probably not less 

 than two hundred feet. 



