120 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



sign, like the moss on the north side of trees to the backwoodsman, or almost 

 like the compass to the wanderer on the trackless sea. A plant of the Com- 

 positae family grows abundantly in the prairies, with its thick, dry, resinous 

 leaves, all flattened to one plane, as if fresh from the pressure of a herbarium, 

 surmounted bj' a gay, yellow asteroid flower; and this plant, Silphium lacinea- 

 tum, or rosin weed, even at its earliest exit from the soil, and ever afterwards, 

 in its developments, ranges this broad foliaeeous plane due north and south, 

 thus presenting one face of the leaf east, the other west. Instead of an upper 

 side covered with nature's varnish for protection, an under side presenting 

 the breathing stomata of most leaf-bearing vegetation, these leaves are nearly 

 the same on both sides, rough and resinous. To this peculiarity of ranging its 

 leaf-plane north and south it owes the name of compass plant, and to its 

 highly resinous composition the name of rosin-weed." 



He states that about the lakes grow in abundance "Cedars, Pines, Tama- 

 racks and Alders, the interspaces beneath dotted by such quantities of a genus 

 from the Heath family, as to require a special train at the gathering season, 

 under the name of Huckleberry (or Whortleberry) train; while another genus 

 of the same familj^ the Cranberry, furnishes from otherwise useless swamps, 

 the palatable relish to heighten the savory flesh of the native buffalo, deer 

 or pinnated grouse, which formerly enlivened these vast plains or still rush 

 and whir through the i)raine." 



The first description which can hv found of the Dune region is in the 

 following words: "We found a small river. Trail Creek, with fifteen to twenty 

 feet of water near its mouth and wide enough for a moderate sized vessel to 

 turn in, cutting through a sand drift which has blown up to form a ridge from 

 100 to 176 feet high and in some places only twenty feet wide on the top. 

 it extends west, we were informed, to Indiana City, and some asserted to 

 Chicago, so closely washed by the waves that the sand lately rolled down in 

 an arenaceous avahmche, denominated the Hoosier slide. Yet, in the early 

 settlement of the country between t he lake-waters and this sand ridge the mail 

 stage and other carriages were driven undisturbed by the lake waters, along 

 the beach, from Michigan City to Chicago." 



The Northern Penilentiar.y then in course of construction bj^ convict 

 labor was next mentioned, and of Michigan City he said: "As a matter of 

 home interest it seems highly desirable that Indiana should maintain here or 

 at some other point, if there be a better, along her Lake-coast, a harbor worthy 

 of the State; otherwise her commerce is necessarily diverted to outlets in the 

 adjoining States, the cost of transportation thereby increased to our citizens, 

 and the profits of tlie carrying trade also lost to them." 



That the question of draining the Kankakee Marsh was under considera- 

 tion ()() years ago is shown in a footnote in the Owen report which is as follows: 

 "A company has been rer-ently o:-ganized for the straightening of the Kankakee 

 River, which in its windings is tlu-ee times as long as the direct line; by means 

 of which, and the removal of obstructions, they hope to deepen the channel 

 and form a drain that will run off its high waters and that of its tributaries 



