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Anychia. The oaks of this sandy district are never tall, generally 

 very scraggy, and at best do not show any luxuriance of growth. 

 This black oak forest, if it can be so called, varies from a few rods 

 to three-eights of a mile in width, and extends along the Mississip- 

 pi river for a number of miles, covering the river dune, and 

 speading out over the gently rolling sandy prairie, but everywhere 

 cut off from the forest growth of the uplands by a mile or more 

 of sandy plain. On the bluffs, as before mentioned, the species 

 is again found. The history of how it found a lodgment in 

 the sand prairie nearest the river is an interesting bit of plant 

 distribution. Probably carried by squirrels from woods ad- 

 joining the northern and southern ends of the prairie to the 

 occasional trees of other species, as ash, honey locust and Cot- 

 tonwood, the acorns were covered by the drifting sand and 

 so found soil and moisture enough to germinate and attain the 

 tree estate. Plain grasses and other plants preclude much sand 

 movement further from the immediate source of the sand, 

 the river sand bars, and there is no possibility of the acorns be- 

 coming covered. It is interesting to note that the oak margin 

 is not an even front, but is sinuous with advancing or retreat- 

 ing angles, indicative of the combat between forest and plain 

 for the possession of the sands. 



The pine-cedar association is one of vertical rather than hori- 

 zontal aspect, occupying as it does all the cliffs of the Apple river 

 and its tributaries, as they cut through the Galena limestone to 

 reach the main stream or the Mississippi river into which it 

 debouches. Certain sections of the Galena river also possess 

 these cliffs and have the same trees. Undoubtedly we have here 

 the evidences of either the last stand of a dying race, or the 

 choice of such an inhospitable habitat to avoid competition, both 

 pine and cedar having many xerophytic characteristics that fit 

 them for life on the solid rock, into the crevices of which their 

 roots are insinuated. The white pines attain a height of 110 

 feet, a diameter of 4 feet. The red cedar rarely assumes 

 a growth of more than 30 feet. The herbaceoous plants of 

 these cliffs have been fully discussed in the Qiff Flora of Jo 

 Daviess county (Vol. II. Transactions 111. State Academy of 



