REVIEWS AND CRITICISMS. 23 
“trails’—the same may be said. They so strikingly differ 
from the introduced type, that now all botanists admit them 
to the rank of distinct species, native to the country. Mar- 
tynia surely belongs only to the more southerly part of the 
country in question, and, although within the range of the 
buffalo, has not been carried by them to the northward of 
New Mexico; all this, upon the not well warranted suppo- 
sition that when the writer mentions Martynia he speaks of 
something which he knows. Returning to our first point of 
difficulty with Mr. Berthoud’s statements, we repeat: it is 
wholly futile to use generic names, such as Plantago, Ama- 
rantus, Stipa, Elymus and Epilobium, and say of these, as 
genera, that they do not belong to prairie countries. It is 
simply untrue. These genera do find representation in all 
prairie lands. For example, of Plantago three species are 
thoroughly native in different parts of the region under 
examination. These are P. gnaphalodes, P. eriopoda, and a 
form or subspecies of P. major which botanists everywhere 
readily distinguish from that introduced and well domesti- 
cated Old World type, which has followed civilized man in 
his westward march. The two first named are found nowhere 
to the eastward of the buffalo range. One of these, P. erio- 
poda is found upon the plains only at the distant north, 
beyond the British boundary; it is in Colorado, nevertheless, 
but only near the summits of the higher mountains, whither 
it is perfectly safe to say the buffalo did not transport it; for 
they did not carry their trails into those altitudes. 
Thus might we take up in succession each one of Mr- 
Berthoud’s five-and-twenty plant names, and, knowing the 
vegetation, native and introduced, of the region whereof he 
writes, might either positively disprove, or throw a mantle of 
heavy doubt upon every statement which he has made in 
this wonderful paper respecting the plants. The buffalo, 
away back in unrecorded and unknown ages, perchance may 
have aided in bringing some plants to new stations. This, to 
say the least, is possible. But positive proof of such a thing, 
even in the case of a single plant species, will doubtless be 
